A24’s ‘Backrooms’ Is Still Dominating the Box Office, and Its $10 Million Budget Makes the Numbers Even More Staggering

Horror cinema has always had a remarkable ability to turn modest investments into cultural events, but what Kane Parsons and A24 have pulled off with ‘Backrooms’ is something that even seasoned industry veterans are struggling to fully articulate. The film arrived from an unlikely origin, born not in a Hollywood writer’s room but in the bedroom of a self-taught creator who built a viral universe on YouTube. It hit theaters and immediately changed the conversation about what independent genre filmmaking can achieve.

The film follows a small-town furniture store owner who discovers a portal to an otherworldly dimension in his showroom, with a cast that includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve and Mark Duplass.

It was adapted from Parsons’ found footage YouTube web series, which he began uploading to his channel Kane Pixels in early 2022, presenting the story of a fictional research organization whose scientists explore an extradimensional space of large, mostly vacant and interconnected indoor complexes. That series went viral, pulled in tens of millions of views, and eventually caught the attention of A24.

Now, nearly three weeks into its theatrical run, ‘Backrooms’ is refusing to slow down. According to box office tracking data visible in the screenshot, the film pulled in 1.7 million dollars on its third Monday, a drop of just under 49 percent from the same day the previous week, despite having lost 161 theaters the prior Friday. Its domestic cumulative total has climbed to 161.9 million dollars, and analysts are projecting a final US run of between 175 and 190 million dollars. For a film that cost just 10 million dollars to produce, that means it has already multiplied its budget by more than 16 times over in North American ticket sales alone.

The opening weekend told a story of its own. A24’s horror film obliterated box office expectations with 81 million dollars domestically and 118 million dollars worldwide in its opening weekend, ranking as the largest debut ever for A24 and more than tripling the record once established by Alex Garland’s thriller ‘Civil War’.

The momentum did not stop there. Parsons’ film crossed 100 million dollars at the domestic box office in just six days, becoming A24’s highest-grossing stateside release and surpassing ‘Marty Supreme’, the Timothée Chalamet period film that had previously held that title with 96 million dollars domestically.

As of early June, ‘Backrooms’ had become A24’s highest-grossing worldwide release ever, generating 212 million dollars globally including 135 million dollars in North America, surpassing the lifetime haul of ‘Marty Supreme’ at 191 million dollars worldwide and marking the first time in the studio’s history that a single film crossed the 200 million dollar global threshold.

The story behind the numbers is just as compelling as the numbers themselves. Parsons is just 20 years old, and ‘Backrooms’ was produced by A24 and Chernin Entertainment alongside Atomic Monster, Blumhouse and 21 Laps. His achievement sits within a broader shift reshaping who gets to make movies in Hollywood. The film arrived alongside ‘Obsession’, a breakout horror hit from fellow YouTuber Curry Barker, and the two films together have ignited a genuine industry conversation about creator-driven cinema.

Jason Blum, who produced both titles, framed it in generational terms. Speaking at a PGA panel, Blum told The Hollywood Reporter there is “almost this feeling of the ’70s, of a new generation of young people making edgy movies that are connecting in theaters in a crazy way.” Producer James Wan echoed that sentiment, pointing to Parsons’ creative purity as a key reason audiences responded so strongly. “The irony is, because Kane is so young and new, he isn’t cynical or marred by the machination of commercial filmmaking,” Wan said. “He’s not thinking about opening weekend numbers, he’s strictly thinking about the authenticity of the film he’s making and what his fans are expecting. And so they showed up in droves for him.”

The film’s staying power in the top three of the US box office, still edging out big-studio competition weeks into its run, signals that word of mouth is doing serious work here. Its B-minus CinemaScore, visible in the shared screenshot, is unusually low for a film performing at this level, yet audiences keep showing up. That gap between exit poll scores and sustained ticket sales often marks the kind of polarizing, conversation-generating horror that spreads fastest.

Parsons has been teasing potential sequels to ‘Backrooms’, suggesting that the dimension of endless fluorescent corridors may have a much longer life on the big screen ahead of it. Given what this film has accomplished on a shoestring budget, there is little doubt A24 will be paying close attention to wherever Parsons wants to go next.

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