A24 bets its record $118M ‘Backrooms’ can franchise as Kane Parsons plots a feature anthology

A24 built its reputation by letting filmmakers chase singular, one-off visions — the kind of swings that rarely repeat. Its biggest commercial hit to date asks the studio to do the opposite. “Backrooms,” adapted from the liminal-space horror that Kane Parsons built on YouTube as a teenager, has handed A24 a phenomenon it now wants to systematize rather than savor — and Parsons wants to do it as a feature anthology rather than a conventional sequel.

As Deadline first reported in an exclusive, the 20-year-old director is already under contract for more “Backrooms” at A24 and is hunting for a screenwriting collaborator to help him scale the concept. Parsons has been candid on the press tour that he has taken the property as far as it can go on YouTube; the leap into theaters, in his framing, is less a cash-in than the only room left to explore.

The numbers explain A24’s appetite. “Backrooms” opened to roughly $118M worldwide, the largest debut in the studio’s history and more than triple the $25.5M record Alex Garland’s “Civil War” set in 2024. Made for under $10M, it was profitable before its second weekend even arrived. Parsons became the youngest filmmaker ever to open a No. 1 film, eclipsing the mark Josh Trank set with “Chronicle” at 27, and an audience that ran 88% under 35 told A24 exactly which generation it had reached.

The anthology choice is the tell. A straight sequel would impose a narrative throughline on a concept whose whole appeal is its endlessness — nondescript rooms that never resolve. An anthology lets A24 keep minting entries without trapping Parsons in one story, much as the original lived as a string of YouTube shorts. It also fits a widening industry pattern of creator-native IP crossing into theaters, from the Mark Duplass-backed “Obsession” ($105.7M) to the coming “The Amazing Digital Circus.”

For now the sequel is intent, not a green light: no stars are attached, no start date is set, and the original’s leads — Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve — are not confirmed to return. The first film was co-financed by A24 and Chernin Entertainment, with 21 Laps, Atomic Monster and Odd Fellows among the producing partners, and is tracking around $36M for its second frame.

A studio that made its name letting directors vanish into private obsessions is now betting it can manufacture one on a schedule — and the kid who built an endless hallway on a laptop gets to decide how many doors it opens.

Tags: a24, box-office, Kane Parsons

A24 bets its record $118M ‘Backrooms’ can franchise as Kane Parsons plots a feature anthology

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