A 16-Year-Old's YouTube Video Just Became A24's Highest-Grossing Film of All Time
Kane Parsons was 16 when he uploaded a nine-minute found-footage horror short made in Blender. Four years later, A24 released his feature film 'Backrooms' to an $81 million opening weekend and $390 million worldwide. He is the youngest director to ever open at No. 1 at the domestic box office.
Editorial
In January 2022, a 16-year-old from Petaluma, California named Kane Parsons uploaded a nine-minute video to YouTube. It was a found-footage horror short called "The Backrooms (Found Footage)," depicting a camcorder-wielding filmmaker falling through the floor of reality into an endless expanse of fluorescent-lit, yellow-wallpapered rooms with damp carpet. Every environment was built in Blender. Parsons had taught himself the software through online tutorials. The video has since been viewed over 79 million times.
Four years later, on May 29, 2026, A24 released Parsons' feature directorial debut. It opened to $81 million domestically and $118 million worldwide, according to Deadline. As of August 2026, the film has grossed over $390 million globally on a $10 million budget, according to The Numbers. It is A24's highest-grossing film of all time by a significant margin, more than doubling the previous record held by Marty Supreme at $191 million. Parsons, who turned 21 in June, is the youngest director to ever open at No. 1 at the domestic box office, according to Cosmic Book News.
How did a YouTube short become a $390 million movie?
The Backrooms concept predates Parsons. In May 2019, an anonymous user on 4chan's /x/ (paranormal) board posted a photograph of an empty, fluorescent-lit office space and wrote what became the founding text of the entire mythology: "If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms." The term "noclip" is a video game reference, borrowed from Doom, for passing through solid walls. The post described approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms, fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and the possibility that something else is in there with you.
The concept spread across Reddit, forums, and wikis. Thousands of contributors built a collaborative mythology with hundreds of levels, entities, and interconnected narratives. But Parsons was the first creator to visualize the Backrooms with a level of photorealism that matched the atmosphere of the original post. His 2022 YouTube video was so convincing that many viewers assumed he had filmed in actual abandoned offices, not rendered them digitally. The video spread across YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok within weeks, and Parsons continued releasing installments that expanded the lore into a serialized found-footage universe.
By February 2023, A24 had won the rights after competing with several other studios, according to Deadline. The production brought in Chernin Entertainment, James Wan's Atomic Monster, and Shawn Levy's 21 Laps Entertainment. Parsons was 17 when the deal was announced. He chose the film over college.
What does the finished movie actually look like?
Backrooms was shot entirely in Greater Vancouver on a 30,000-square-foot practical set built across four soundstages in an office park, according to Movie Locations. Parsons pushed for physical sets over CGI despite having built his reputation on digital work. "I was strongly pushing for a physical set," he told Interview Magazine. "I could traverse it with my eyes closed because I modeled the whole thing in Blender."
The cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve (who won Best Actress at Cannes for The Worst Person in the World), Mark Duplass, Avan Jogia, and Finn Bennett. The screenplay was written by Will Soodik, whose credits include Homeland and Westworld. The film carries an R rating and runs approximately 110 minutes. An extended cut, titled "Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition," was released theatrically on July 3 with 16 additional minutes of footage.
Critics responded strongly. Backrooms holds an 87% Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes across 303 reviews, with a critics consensus calling it "a startlingly assured feature debut." Owen Gleiberman of Variety described it as "extraordinarily effective" as an atmospheric freakout. The audience score sits at 74%, with some fans of the original lore critiquing the film's narrative additions to the mythology.
Who else jumped from YouTube to theaters in 2026?
Parsons' story sits within a broader trend that defined the year. Curry Barker, a 26-year-old YouTuber behind the channel "That's a Bad Idea," directed Obsession for Focus Features. It was made in 20 days on a $750,000 budget, earned a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score, and has grossed over $403 million worldwide, according to NBC News. Markiplier, the gaming and horror YouTube creator with over 36 million subscribers, self-financed and directed Iron Lung, adapted from an indie horror game. He self-distributed the film on 4,000 screens after fan demand and grossed $51 million on a $3 million budget, according to Variety.
Combined, these three films from YouTube creators have grossed over $840 million worldwide in 2026. The Washington Times described the convergence as proof that "the old gatekeepers who decided which stories got told and which creators got a shot have lost their monopoly." YouTube's own blog spotlighted Parsons, Barker, and Markiplier as a new generation of horror directors.
The precedents exist but were rarer. David F. Sandberg went from posting micro-budget horror shorts on YouTube to directing the 2016 studio feature Lights Out, which grossed $148 million, and later directed Shazam. The Philippou Brothers, known as RackaRacka on YouTube, directed Talk to Me for A24 in 2022, which grossed $92 million. Bo Burnham transitioned from YouTube comedy in 2006 to directing Eighth Grade for A24 in 2018. But three creators delivering major theatrical hits in a single year, all from horror, all under 30, collectively approaching $1 billion, has no precedent.
What happened when A24 tried to own the internet's folklore?
In July 2026, fan artists reported that Backrooms-inspired artwork was being hit with copyright takedown notices on Redbubble filed by "A24 Films LLC," according to GameSpot. The backlash was immediate. The Backrooms mythology was built collaboratively by thousands of internet users over seven years, and the yellow wallpaper aesthetic predated the film by years. A Reddit post about the takedowns went viral.
Parsons intervened directly, commenting on the Reddit thread: "I'm looking into this. Should not be happening." A24 issued a statement within 24 hours, attributing the takedowns to an automated system intended to remove cam rips: "A24 makes no claim of ownership over the yellow wallpaper, the original post referencing it, or any of the community works that have since been built around it." The situation resolved quickly, but it crystallized a question that internet-native IP will keep raising: when collaborative folklore becomes a $390 million product, the legal frameworks have not caught up.
What does a 20-year-old say about becoming the youngest director to open at No. 1?
"When I was younger, there was this feeling that projects I looked up to were in the stratosphere," Parsons told Yahoo Entertainment. "Realizing that most people I treated as being in that above space are now casually aware of the thing that I did, it doesn't feel any different than normal life."
On the film itself, he was blunt with Interview Magazine: "I don't have anything where I want to look away from the screen at any point." On generative AI, he was equally direct: "I would never lean in a generative AI direction." On his creative process: "I would get excited about a scene or a visual or a moment in my head that I wanted to see exist, but there was nothing surrounding it, supporting that moment. So it's like, okay, so now I've got to learn how to do these things so I can make that moment," he told No Film School.
Parsons described the experience of stepping onto his own physical set for the first time to Fangoria: "It's weird, being familiar with a place that doesn't exist and then it does." He described the Backrooms as "a tree that's still growing," telling international press that "its branches can extend into different worlds and different mediums."
A24 has not announced a sequel. But with $390 million worldwide against a $10 million budget, the math will do its own talking. In the meantime, Parsons' original nine-minute YouTube video is still up. It has 79 million views and counting. The comments section is full of people discovering it after watching the movie, scrolling back to where it started, trying to find the seam between a teenager's Blender project and Hollywood history.
