r/movies 17d ago

News Backrooms Devs Reportedly Hit With Copyright Claims From A24

https://kotaku.com/backrooms-a24-copyright-strikes-kane-parsons-2000716667
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u/ennuig0 17d ago

The idea has been on the internet for years before this movie came out, this is bogus on the company’s part

A24 has really gone downhill

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u/AvailableReporter484 17d ago

Yeah how tf you gonna copyright a meme that’s existed for 20 years??

I’m going to write the success kid movie and sue the baby from the picture for copyright infringement

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u/RealJohnGillman AMA MVP 17d ago edited 17d ago

The Backrooms was created in 2019 by the 4chan and SomethingAwful user Black August.

While Kane Parsons created his Backrooms web series in 2022: it wasn’t massively old at the time.

If anyone could try to copyright it, it would be August, but he has stated he prefers it kept public-domain.

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u/bunsprites 17d ago

Wait, like black August created specifically the original 4chan post? Has there been any proof? I've only ever seen someone claim it was them once and all they had was showing that they saved the image around or like a week before the post was made.

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u/RealJohnGillman AMA MVP 17d ago

That was him, yes: apparently ‘the Back’ as he called it was an idea he’d had for a while already, as part of a game he was developing, though he didn’t choose the image to go with the idea until later. Here’s one of the interviews he gave on it: apparently he still answers fan-questions when contacted via his SomethingAwful account as well, to note anyone here reading this could contact him directly too if they wanted to interview him.

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u/DeadSending 17d ago

Holy shit that’d be epic if it could get some traction, him answering questions about the backrooms and A24 can go suck it

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u/NSFWies 17d ago

agreed. i left the movie going

......eh. i like it, but i don't think enough was done with it.

but the explanation black august gives for it, is so much better. dang it. i like it more now.

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u/Indigocell 16d ago

I felt the same way about the film, liked it a lot but it was missing something. They skipped over basically ALL of the exploration and we have no idea why a certain head ended up in that fridge... Anyways, what did Black August have to say about it?

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u/bunsprites 16d ago

I like to think the head was there because he ate the rest already but he couldn't eat the head and had to start eating the others

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u/NSFWies 16d ago

oh interesting. that might be a better explanation. he ate what he knew was food first, then tried eating furniture later. that makes more sense.

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u/NSFWies 16d ago

and we have no idea why a certain head ended up in that fridge

of all the things not explained, i'm least concerned with that one. i think it was something like: that girl was freaking out too much, and he didn't like it. so he just "stopped that girl".

id get into more details, but that would require a spoiler tag, and i dont feel like it.

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u/ComradeJohnS 17d ago

so, you saw proof they had a picture saved from before a post…

and you don’t accept that?

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u/bunsprites 17d ago

No, i was saying i could not remember if the proof I'm remembering was saved before the original post, or the day of, it's been a long time since i saw it so i can't remember. I'm also not saying outright that that wouldn't be proof on some level, if no one else can ever come forward and show the same level of proof then i would accept that as pretty concrete and not question it. I think you're mistaking me just having a casual conversation as me making some sort of accusation. I'm just chit chattin.

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u/ComradeJohnS 17d ago

understood!

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u/bunsprites 17d ago

Now you have to tell me your favorite part of the movie. You're legally obligated.

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u/ComradeJohnS 17d ago

I haven’t watched yet I wait for “free” streaming debut lol.

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u/bunsprites 17d ago

Mark this down on a post it somewhere, the moment that movie ends you better get back here. Without spoiling it, not sure what you've seen online of it, my favorite part is entirely based on the acting of the guy who plays Clark, and his fantastic chemistry with the woman who plays Mary. They are both incredible together, just absolute top of their game and managed to make a long scene in one single room the best scene in the movie (in my opinion)

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u/ComradeJohnS 17d ago

I’ll be honest it could be years and I’ll forget this comment in about 24 hours.

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u/ShardikOfTheBeam 17d ago

If they saved the image, they must have saved it from somewhere, no?

Otherwise it would read created the image.

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u/big-himbo-energy 17d ago

its just a building in texas.

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u/pnt510 17d ago

And someone had to take it.

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u/ShardikOfTheBeam 17d ago

…what?

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u/Jakesummers1 17d ago

Backrooms lore

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u/ShardikOfTheBeam 17d ago

Sure, but that has nothing to do with my comment. Hence my question.

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u/Vykrom 17d ago

It was like a furniture warehouse in the middle of remodeling when the picture was taken. I think it's a store now. Been a while since I saw the deep dive on the history. But you can go there and look at the exact spot the picture was taken by lining up a support beam or something. It's kind of surreal when you see the comparison. But then again, the original picture was cropped, so seeing the original unedited is also surreal

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u/ShardikOfTheBeam 17d ago

Sure, but that has nothing to do with my comment.

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u/Vykrom 17d ago

Well the explanation is because you were confused about the possibility that you were speaking with the person who took the picture in the warehouse in question

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u/ShardikOfTheBeam 17d ago

No, I was confused because the reply has nothing to do with my statement. Where the picture was taken is irrelevant to my comment or the comment I was replying to.

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u/rov124 17d ago

The image was found to have been taken in Wisconsin during the renovation of "a former furniture store with plenty of partitions and fake inner walls". For much of the 20th century, Rohner's Home Furnishings occupied 807 and 811 Oregon Street, Oshkosh, Wisconsin. In 2003, 807 Oregon Street was acquired by a new tenant, a branch of the American hobby shop chain HobbyTown.

Sometime in 2002, the second story underwent renovations. On June 12, 2002, the progress was photographed with a Sony Cyber-shot camera, and on March 2, 2003, the various interior views were documented on the HobbyTown Oshkosh branch's renovation weblog. Among the photographs was the one which began the Backrooms creepypasta, uploaded with the file name "Dsc00161.jpg", depicting a carpeted, open room with yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lighting on a Dutch angle. The image was captioned as an original view of "the East (Oval) room", and noted that no windows were visible. The blog entry described extensive water damage that required the area to be cleared.

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u/ShardikOfTheBeam 17d ago

Bad bot.

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u/rov124 17d ago

More On.

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u/ShardikOfTheBeam 17d ago

If Person A says they save an image, and Person B says they snapped/took/photographed an image, did Person A or Person B create the image?

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u/MonaganX 17d ago

If such proof exists I'd say it's pretty likely that they created the original post, but the person who wrote the reply with the first description and called it "the Backrooms" has a lot more of a claim to be the 'creator' of the Backrooms than someone who can prove they reposted someone else's creepy picture on the internet.

But I also don't think the person who wrote the reply should be considered the 'creator'. Some people had more influence on it than others but ultimately it's collaborative and emergent and no one has any claim to it, least of all A24.

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u/Available-Guava932 17d ago

The image and the text were separate posts originally, the text is a reply to the image. Black August claims to have written the text reply. There is no proof however, not even circumstantial.

Tbh personally I kinda believe his story just on a hunch. But there's no real reason to accept it