Chiwetel Ejiofor in “Backrooms,” directed by Petaluma’s Kane Parsons. The 20-year-old YouTuber’s feature film debut beat the new “Star Wars” movie at the box office on its opening weekend.
YouTubers may be saving Hollywood, which received a stunning message from moviegoers over the weekend.
The evidence arrived at the North American box office, where a 20-year-old Petaluma filmmaker became the youngest person to open a movie at No. 1, while another YouTube-bred director claimed the No. 2 spot.
Both filmmakers, in their feature directorial debuts, saw their low-budget horror movies outperform “The Mandalorian and Grogu” — the first “Star Wars” movie in seven years‚ making it clear audiences are looking for a new kind of movie from a new kind of filmmaker.
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Kane Parsons, a Marin School of the Arts at Novato High School alum, topped the charts for Friday-Sunday, May 29-31, when his low-budgeted horror film “Backrooms,” set in San Jose and starring Oscar-nominated actors Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, debuted with an astonishing $81 million in ticket sales.
Coming in at No. 2 was “Obsession,” a $750,000 horror movie by 26-year-old Curry Barker. With $26.4 million in ticket sales, it became the first movie since Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) to see its box-office revenue increase in its second and third weekends of release outside the holiday season, according to its distributor, Focus Features.
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“What people are looking for, it feels like usually they’re ignored or neglected,” Parsons told Wired magazine ahead of his film’s release. “I think there’s definitely a power in feeling like you’re tapped into that conversation — and actually having a conversation with everyone else.”
“Backrooms” director Kane Parsons, center, and actors Chiwetel Ejiofor, left, and Renate Reinsve arrive at the movie’s premiere in Santa Monica on May 7. Parsons, who is from Petaluma, directed the low-budget horror film, which took in $81 million in its opening weekend.
Meanwhile, “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” endured a 70% drop in ticket sales in its second week, tumbling to $25 million to stand at $137.4 million domestically and $246.6 million worldwide.
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While Jon Favreau’s big-screen continuation of the Disney+ series drew an older audience of established fans, “Backrooms” and “Obsession” are bringing in the Gen Z moviegoers in numbers that Hollywood rarely does. According to exit polls cited by the Associated Press, 86% of ticket buyers were younger than 35, with more than half under 25 and 44% under 21 — many watching the films more than once and in groups.
Both were produced by low-budget horror impresario Jason Blum’s Blumhouse-Atomic Monster.
“Blumhouse-Atomic Monster has the #1 and #2 movies in the country this weekend, both made for almost no money,” Blum posted on the social platform X. “Theaters are packed. What a time to be making scary movies.”
At a budget of $165 million and an advertising budget of up to $150 million, “The Mandalorian and Grogu” faces an uphill climb toward profitability. But “Backrooms” is already there. Thanks to a production budget of $10 million and just a few million more in advertising, its $118 million global haul should put it at least at the break-even point.
The same is true for “Obsession,” which is at $148 million globally.
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Inde Navarrette, left, and Michael Johnston in Curry Barker’s “Obsession.” The horror movie by the 26-year-old director came in at No. 2 at the box office over the weekend.
In general, a film has to make at least three times its production budget in ticket sales to break even after its split with theater exhibitors and the recoupment of production costs and advertising.
Parsons posted his first YouTube video in April 2015, when he was just 9 years old. He grew from internet memes to short films, with “Backrooms” originating as a web series he started in 2022. His YouTube channel, Kane Pixels, has 3.2 million subscribers.
The feature version of his web series has now become distributor A24’s highest-grossing debut, easily beating Alex Garland’s “Civil War,” which opened to $25.5 million in April 2024. The previous youngest director to open at No. 1 was then-27-year-old Josh Trank, whose “Chronicle” debuted with $22 million in 2012.
But Parsons and Barker aren’t the only YouTubers making a splash. In January, “Iron Lung” by Mark Fischbach, aka Markiplier, the $3 million science fiction film adaptation of his own web series, took in $50 million at the box office.
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“The world is changing, and Hollywood needs to look to YouTube to find the young people who are coming up and have something to say,” Kori Adelson, a “Backrooms” producer and president of North Road Films, told Variety. “People like Kane grew up online and they’ve figured out how to get eyeballs on their work in a way that wasn’t possible for young filmmakers 20 years ago.”
With box-office interest declining not only in “Star Wars” but also Marvel movies, intellectual property franchises appear to be on the wane. For years, critics and audiences have asked for more original films, and studios are obliging. One of the strongest examples was Oakland filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s Oscar winner, “Sinners,” which proved last year there was an appetite for originality at the big-budget studio level as well.
In past generations, low-budget creatives have led cinematic revolutions, including the French New Wave in the 1960s, the MTV music video directors of the 1980s, the Sundance generation of the 1990s and the found-footage horror movement of the 2000s.
Now YouTubers are leading the way.
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