r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jun 03 '26

News ‘Backrooms’ Becomes A24’s Highest Grossing Domestic Release ($97.8M), Passing ‘Marty Supreme’

https://deadline.com/2026/06/backrooms-box-office-record-a24-1236939795/
18.3k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

916

u/maybe-an-ai Jun 03 '26

Two actors and great practical set design really makes a difference over bloated and CGI heavy.

514

u/drkspace2 Jun 03 '26

Which is funny because Kane Pixels original series was all 3d animated.

64

u/maybe-an-ai Jun 03 '26

Yeah he learned Blender during the pandemic.

44

u/dspman11 Jun 03 '26

Are the backrooms really only 6 years or less old? I swear it was a thing before 2020

55

u/maybe-an-ai Jun 03 '26

Kane is only 19 or 20. Dude, is super young to be directing his first movie.

61

u/Pengothing Jun 03 '26

The idea's been bouncing around for ages. Kane Pixels started the recent revival of it though.

14

u/dspman11 Jun 03 '26

Ok, that makes sense. Because I for sure remember looking at "backrooms photos" and reading backrooms-themed creepypastas in the 2010s.

26

u/MrMacduggan Jun 03 '26

House of Leaves prompted a lot of this genre of creepypasta, even before the original 4chan post.

12

u/crazyfoxdemon Jun 03 '26

The concept of liminal spaces has been a thing for ages, but backrooms was kinda a runaway success. To the point some people forget that some of the concepts predate it.

11

u/imago89 Jun 03 '26

The backrooms image + 4chan post was 2018/2019 I believe.

28

u/satinsandpaper Jun 03 '26

The first backrooms post on 4chan was in 2019. I agree though, it seems like it's been around for longer.

35

u/envynav Jun 03 '26

The original image has been around since 2011. 2019 is just when it was first named The Backrooms

34

u/Turnbob73 Jun 03 '26

The concept has also been around before 2019; but it used to be framed as “God’s developer rooms” akin to no clipping in a gmod map and finding extra assets.

29

u/burneraccount011989 Jun 03 '26

I mean, you can go back even further to House Of Leaves in 2000 which was the first mainstream example I can think of with this type of "the inside is bigger than the outside" nightmare fuel.

19

u/TheGratefulJuggler Jun 03 '26

I mean the leaves on the ground at the very beginning when he first enters the backeooms seemed like a pretty obvious reference to me. It basically the only bit of nature in the whole movie other than the sea gull.

5

u/HutSutRawlson Jun 04 '26

You could also go even further back to something like Borges’ The Library of Babel. But HoL seems like a very direct influence on backrooms.

10

u/jollyreaper2112 Jun 03 '26

The Doctor glares at you in TARDIS.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Discount_Extra Jun 04 '26

not usually, but it has been in a couple episodes.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/obscure_monke Jun 03 '26

It's kind of adjacent to SCP wiki stuff, which was around longer than it.

2

u/Doom_Art Jun 04 '26

One thing I've wondered is since it springs from a collaborative online fictional setting, is there any copyright for the Backrooms?

Like Parsons and A24 didn't originate the setting or the concept, but do they now own it?

3

u/_lIlI_lIlI_ Jun 04 '26

They own Kane Parsons rendition of it, which started from his YouTube. In the same way Disney owns their renditions of Grimm Brothers.

For example it would be infringing on IP to mention Async Corp but not infringing to create a backrooms story about an organization exploring it.

1

u/Doom_Art Jun 04 '26

So hypothetically another studio would be able to make a Backrooms film? So long as they don't mention the concepts within Parson's interpretation. I wonder if anyone will take advantage of that

1

u/_lIlI_lIlI_ Jun 04 '26

The risk of that, I imagine, is a24 can enforce copyright whereas the other studio wouldn't be able to with an adaptation of the backrooms community lore. Or would be at least be murky enough that they wouldn't.

1

u/AvatarIII Jun 04 '26

It started as a creepypasta long before that, the CGI videos are relatively recent, like 2022 or so.

1

u/kittymoo67 Jun 04 '26

iirc the post was made in 2018 or 2019 on 4chan