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(Bloomberg) — Backrooms, a film based on 20-year-old Kane Parsons’s popular YouTube series of the same name, debuted to $81.4 million at the US and Canada box office this weekend, setting a record for independent distributor A24.
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The performance of the $10 million science fiction horror movie — about the discovery of endless, interdimensional maze-like spaces — is roughly on par with the opening of the latest Star Wars film, The Mandalorian and Grogu, on Memorial Day weekend.
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It’s also the third straight box office success this year from filmmakers who got their start on Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube streaming platform. The phenomenon is crowning new directorial kings in the movie business, earning producers small fortunes and rewriting the playbook of Hollywood economics.
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Earlier in May, Focus Features, the specialty label of Comcast Corp.’s Universal film studio, released Obsession from 26-year-old YouTuber Curry Barker. The movie, which cost less than $1 million to make, has become Focus’s highest-grossing title in North America with $104.7 million in sales. More tickets are being purchased for Obsession from one weekend to the next — a rare feat achieved by only a handful of cultural sensations such as Titanic in 1997.
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In January, Mark Fischbach, known to his YouTube fans as Markiplier, was set to release his $3 million film Iron Lung in 60 independent cinemas. Fischbach led a grassroots campaign encouraging his followers to phone up their local theaters and request Iron Lung screenings. The film was ultimately picked up by major chains including AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., Regal Entertainment Group and Cinemark Holdings Inc. and grossed $41.4 million in the US and Canada.
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Parsons uploaded the first of 24 Backrooms episodes on YouTube in 2022. The “creepypasta” series — a meme-generation term that denotes a horror story or concept that’s become internet legend — went viral, garnering roughly 200 million views across episodes ranging anywhere between 30 seconds and 45 minutes in length. In 2023, A24 announced it would develop a Backrooms film with then 17-year-old Parsons.
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Some of the industry’s most successful figures including Atomic Monster horror label founder James Wan, Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy and former 20th Century Fox studio chief Peter Chernin helped produce the picture.
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“The key to Hollywood has always been finding new talent early,” Chernin said in an interview on The Town podcast on Friday.
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“The next generation is making YouTube and TikTok shorts.”
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