Kane Parsons Reportedly Locks In His Next Movie, and It’s the One Fans Were Hoping For

Horror fans spent the summer buzzing about a $10 million passion project that somehow turned into one of the biggest theatrical surprises of the year. What started as an eerie YouTube series filmed by a teenager has since become a full-blown franchise, and now it looks like its creator isn’t wasting any time building on that momentum.

‘Backrooms‘ became a certified phenomenon for A24 after its May release, pulling in an $81 million opening weekend and finishing its run with nearly $394 million worldwide against that shoestring budget, according to World of Reel. The film also landed an 87% “Certified Fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes, cementing it as both a critical and commercial hit, per Screen Rant.

Now, according to a new report, Kane Parsons has officially signed on to direct ‘Backrooms 2′ for A24, with an official announcement described as imminent, per an exclusive report from Dread Central. The outlet notes that the sequel will be Parsons’ next project, meaning he’s diving straight back into the world he built rather than taking on something else first.

That “something else” is worth noting too. Parsons has reportedly been developing an unrelated original project alongside ‘Longlegs’ filmmaker Osgood Perkins, who mentored him through ‘Backrooms’ and helped shape its screenplay, but that project has apparently been put on the back burner for now, according to World of Reel.

Parsons’ rise has been almost dizzyingly fast. He was just 16 years old when he uploaded ‘The Backrooms (Found Footage)’ to YouTube in 2022, expanding on internet lore with his own analog horror series, and he was only 19 when A24 greenlit the feature film adaptation, making him the youngest director in the studio’s history at the time, according to Variety.

The project’s path to the screen involved some Hollywood serendipity as well. Executive producer Chris White discovered Parsons’ videos after his own teenage son showed them to him, eventually bringing the project to James Wan and Michael Clear at Atomic Monster before A24 acquired the rights, per Dread Central.

‘Backrooms’ starred Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, and Avan Jogia, and followed people who become trapped in the Backrooms, a sprawling alternate dimension filled with unnervingly familiar yet unsettling spaces, according to World of Reel. The film’s open-ended conclusion left plenty of threads dangling, including the fates of Reinsve’s Dr. Mary Kline and Ejiofor’s “Pirate Clark,” setting up multiple directions a sequel could take, per Screen Rant.

Parsons himself has been candid about his ambitions for the franchise from the start, telling Variety before the first film’s release that ‘Backrooms’ had always been envisioned as something larger than a single movie. That vision now seems to be paying off in a big way, especially given how fiercely studios have been courting him since. A recent Puck report indicated A24 had floated its richest filmmaker deal ever to keep Parsons in the fold, even as Warner Bros., HBO, NBCUniversal, and Sony reportedly circled with competing offers, according to The Playlist.

For now, though, it sounds like ‘Backrooms 2’ is exactly where Parsons wants to be, and A24 clearly isn’t interested in letting its most unexpected breakout talent wander far. With an official announcement reportedly on the horizon, fans of the franchise won’t have to wait long to find out just how much bigger this mythology is about to get.

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