When Kane Parsons was brought on by A24 to direct Backrooms, a feature adaptation of the viral YouTube shorts he created, he was still a teenager. Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old when the process began.
You can argue with me all you want about talent versus experience, but there is a zero percent chance that he had a complete understanding of how the business works, how to write a feature screenplay at a studio level, or how to navigate all of the expectations that come with directing a major motion picture. That’s not a knock on him. It’s reality. Most filmmakers spend decades learning those things.
Sure, there are outliers. People will point to films like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, but even those examples aren’t quite what people think they are. Those movies went through significant post-production shaping after they were acquired and aren’t exactly the same films that originally generated all the buzz.
Digressing.
One of the coolest stories to come out of Backrooms was learning that Osgood Perkins, who recently broke out in a major way with Longlegs and The Monkey, was brought in to mentor Parsons throughout the process. Parsons was still in high school when this all started, and Perkins had already been through the studio system while building a career as one of the more distinctive filmmakers working in horror today.
At least in my opinion, he’s kind of the perfect choice.
Parsons discussed the mentorship publicly on the red carpet. It wasn’t some conspiracy. It wasn’t hidden information. It happened, and frankly, it makes a whole lot of sense. Somehow, that simple fact got twisted into a bizarre narrative that Perkins secretly directed the movie himself.
Give me a fucking break.
That’s an argument for another day.
What we’re really talking about is a three- to four-year collaboration between Parsons and Perkins as they worked their way through a massive production. They obviously built a relationship during that process.
Last night, Jeff Sneider reported that Parsons and Perkins are teaming up again, this time on an original project that Parsons will direct. More than anything, that tells me the two had a great experience working together. It also suggests that Perkins has enough confidence in Parsons as a filmmaker to continue investing his time and energy into helping him develop.
That’s exciting.
I’m told that Kane Parsons is developing a new project with his BACKROOMS mentor Oz Perkins, as first mentioned on THE HOT MIC last week. https://t.co/qFny9CZ1nG
— Jeff Sneider (@TheInSneider) June 3, 2026
Backrooms went on to open to a record-breaking $80 million domestically and quickly crossed the $100 million mark worldwide. It’ll likely take a substantial second-weekend drop like most event movies do, but you’re still talking about a film that could ultimately finish with an enormous global box office total.
More importantly, it brought younger audiences back into theaters.
I’ve talked about this before, but one of the most fascinating things about Backrooms wasn’t the box office itself. It was seeing teenagers show up. Actual groups of teenagers. Not parents dragging kids to the movies. Not families. Young people choosing to go to the theater because they were excited about something.
That’s the audience Hollywood has been trying to get back for years.
The hope is that those audiences eventually start following filmmakers the same way previous generations followed directors like Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, or Quentin Tarantino. The dream scenario is that Kane Parsons himself becomes the draw. That people show up because it’s a Kane Parsons movie, not simply because it’s Backrooms.
If studios are paying attention, that’s something they should be actively nurturing.
Digressing again.
I’m a huge fan of Osgood Perkins. I’ve liked just about everything he’s done. I was actually the first critic to review The Blackcoat’s Daughter back when it was still called February after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Looking back now, it’s kind of remarkable.
That film helped establish Perkins as a filmmaker worth paying attention to, and it arrived during the same period that A24 was beginning its ascent into becoming one of the most important studios working in genre filmmaking, and acquired the film.
Now here we are years later. Perkins is coming off the biggest success of his career, Backrooms has become a phenomenon, and we’re watching the baton get passed to an entirely new generation of filmmakers.
That’s a pretty cool thing to witness.
We’ll have more on the project as soon as we learn more.
