Backrooms Director Is Backing Creators in a Fight With the A24

The Backrooms has always been a strange case study in how internet folklore gets adapted for the big screen. What started as an anonymous 4chan post in 2019 grew into a sprawling, community-built horror mythology long before any studio got involved, and that grassroots history is exactly what makes the latest controversy sting.

Kane Parsons, the creator whose viral YouTube series turned the concept into a household name, has spent the past few years watching his passion project scale into a genuine box office phenomenon. His feature adaptation for A24 became the studio’s biggest opening ever and made him the youngest director to top the box office.

Now that same success appears to be creating friction with the very community that built the Backrooms in the first place. A Reddit post shared to the r slash backrooms community accused A24 of having a piece of fan-made artwork pulled from the marketplace Redbubble, describing the image as a recreation of the original 2019 photo that kicked off the entire Backrooms legend.

The artist behind the post, using the username GnarlyNet, wrote that the piece had nothing to do with A24’s film or its official merchandise, and expressed disappointment that a studio would move against independent creators who were inspired by the same internet culture the company has profited from. They argued that owning the rights to a specific film adaptation should not translate into ownership over an entire community driven concept.

Parsons himself weighed in directly on the thread, commenting that he was looking into the situation and that it should not be happening. He later clarified in a separate Reddit comment that he had disputed the removal on the artist’s behalf, explaining that the artwork in question was recreated from the original 2019 Backrooms image rather than copied from anything tied to A24’s film or its merchandise.

The story quickly picked up steam elsewhere online, with reports suggesting the issue may not have been isolated to a single Redbubble listing. One account tracking Backrooms-related news claimed the problem extended beyond that platform and questioned whether YouTube creators could be targeted next.

A24 has since offered an explanation for what happened. According to a source who spoke with ScreenCrush, the takedown claim submitted to Redbubble was triggered through an automated system rather than an intentional request from the studio, and the claim has since been retracted.

Whether automated or not, the incident has reignited a broader conversation about what happens when major studios adapt internet-born concepts that were never owned by any single creator to begin with. It echoes a similar situation involving Skibidi Toilet, whose creator Alexey Gerasimov partnered with Michael Bay’s Invisible Narratives to expand that universe into film and television, only for the production company to later face accusations of pushing him out, along with reports of a copyright strike against the game modding tool Garry’s Mod.

For now, the Backrooms community appears to have an ally in Parsons, who has positioned himself as willing to push back on behalf of the fans and independent artists who helped turn his original short film into a global phenomenon in the first place.

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