After the global success of Kane Parsons’ debut feature Backrooms, much speculation has swirled around what’s next for the young filmmaker and sequel plans for the summer indie hit. This weekend, Parsons stepped into Deadline’s Zurich Summit Studio where he teased that a limited TV series would be the ideal way for him to deliver the “main ending” of the Backrooms story arc.
“I never stop making things,” Parsons told Deadline. “There’s a few things that I would love to talk about when I can soon.”
He continued: “I’ve said since the very beginning that the dream scenario would be a limited series for Backrooms to get to the main ending.”
Parsons said that ever since he first made the found footage web series Backrooms on YouTube in 2022, that there had “always been a plan” to take it narratively and “it’s just been about finding the proper way to package that.”
“I can’t say anything but there’s been a very set arc to the whole thing from the beginning, and I just feel absurdly excited at the idea of actually being able to follow through on all of it.”
Backrooms is rooted in an internet myth that people can accidently glitch through the bounds of physical reality and fall out of our world and into the Backrooms, an infinite, surreal labyrinth of empty, yellow rooms.
The film, which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, became a huge phenomenon in the indie space earlier this year having grossed more than $400M globally since it’s May release off of a $10M budget, making it A24’s highest grossing film. Parsons, who is now 21-years-old, became the youngest director to debut a film at number one at the domestic and global box office.
But he admitted that theatrical numbers are not something he focuses on as an artist.
“I wasn’t big into the projections,” he told Deadline. “That’s not the area that I’m interested in following for the most part. I think it distracts from what I actually enjoy with the work. But I knew there would be a certain level of people showing up for Backrooms given how engrained in the world and the community online it already had been. So, I knew people would be curious, but the degree to which it burst into audiences outside of that was not something I anticipated.”
When pressed about the recent trend of filmmakers crossing over from YouTube into the traditional space – fellow YouTube creator Curry Barker’s debut feature Obsession was also a global box office hit this summer – Parsons said modestly that “it has nothing to do with myself.”
“You’re going to see more of this,” he says. “It’s kind of inevitable, given the pressure cooker of people our age who have grown up with the internet.”
He added: “It’s cool to be at the front of that but that’s just the constant tide of these things.”
While his career started online, he admits that he’s “felt the need to detach from most of my online presence.”
“[It’s] just the amount of time and effort being put into something that doesn’t actually contribute to what people are excited about, like specific projects…I’d rather just go off and be a secretive hermit and then go make something that I think is worthwhile. I think I’ve always mostly been that way.”
Check out the full video above.
