Hollywood has been struggling to compete with YouTube for years.
Now it’s trying a new strategy: hiring YouTubers. The early results look promising.
This weekend, “Backrooms,” a moody horror movie based on an internet meme, looks like it could bring in astonishing $60 million at the box office — which means it will likely beat out Disney’s new “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.” Director Kane Parsons has made stuff on YouTube for years, but this is his first film for theaters, which makes sense: He is 20 years old.
That follows the success of “Obsession,” which has grossed $74 million in the last two weeks. It’s made by 26-year-old Curry Barker, another YouTube veteran making his theatrical debut.
And those films came after Mark Fischbach, better known to his 38 million YouTube fans as Markiplier, brought out his “Iron Lung” movie, which he made for a reported $3 million and has now grossed $50 million.
Journalism Rules require me to point out that three things make up a bona fide trend. But I think we’re actually talking about two different ideas here.
- When Fischbach made his movie, he self-financed and produced the whole thing, and asked his fans for help with distribution as well. Going to see “Iron Lung” was something you did because you liked Markiplier and wanted to support him.
- Parsons and Barker also benefit from YouTube fandom. But their followings there are smaller than Fischbach’s. More important: They are actively working within the Hollywood system, by making movies with established studios — A24 for “Backrooms,” Blumhouse for “Obsession.” That looks a lot more like Hollywood using YouTube as a farm team, where it can pluck promising online prospects and give them a shot at the big leagues.
Which isn’t a new idea. Mainstream media has been using the internet broadly and YouTube specifically as an incubator for years, which is why you know who Justin Bieber and Issa Rae are. It’s true for directors, too: Dan Trachtenberg, who made last year’s “Predator: Badlands,” announced himself to Hollywood back in 2011, with a 7-minute short based on the video game Portal.
It seems quite likely we will see a lot more of the “Backrooms” and “Obsession” model, simply because “making movies and putting them on YouTube” is such an obvious route for any young filmmaker. Martin Scorsese would have done the same thing, if he started out with an iPhone and a broadband connection.
To me, the more intriguing question is whether we will see more Markipliers: people who develop real followings on YouTube (or any other digital platform) who can convince their followers to look up from their phones and buy tickets to something.
That remains rare, but less than it used to be, which is why it’s no longer shocking when podcasters (podcasters!) fill up theaters. Let’s see if more directors go the “Iron Lung” route.
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