Given the massive success of Skinmarink (which has earned nearly $2M at the box office on the back of its $15,000 production budget), it was probably inevitable that we’d see a few similar projects follow along in its wake. From the sound of a new report over at Deadline, it sounds like one of those projects may have already been found.
Says Deadline:
“Over the last year, director and VFX artist Kane Parsons has shot his YouTube following into the stratosphere with the viral success of his mysterious short, “The Backrooms (Found Footage).” It’s the first in a series of found-footage horror videos which have thus far garnered nearly 100 million views and will now be adapted for the big screen by A24, Atomic Monster, Chernin Entertainment and 21 Laps.
Parsons — who’s just 17 years old — will direct from a script by Roberto Patino (DMZ).”
Yes, that’s right: The Backrooms, the viral YouTube horror series created by Kane Parsons, is being given the feature film treatment, with a script by DMZ‘s Robert Patino and its 17-year-old creator in the director’s chair. Given that Parsons’s videos are mostly free from narrative constraints and built largely around the inherent horror of liminal spaces, it will be very intriguing, indeed, to see what the big-screen version of this series looks like.
Here’s the very first installment of The Backrooms, in case you’re unfamiliar with the series (note: if, at any point in the last few years, you mentioned being a House of Leaves fan to your most terminally online friend, there’s a good chance they already sent this video to you):
Well over a dozen installments of The Backrooms can currently be found on Parsons’ YouTube page, and one can easily imagine (particularly following Skinamarink‘s performance at the box office) why A24, Atomic Monster, 21 Laps and Chernin Entertainment might be interested in bringing the project to theaters: you’ve got the ambient noise, the unreliable geography – hell, there’s maybe even a few creatures to be found within the many, many hallways that make up The Backrooms.
There’s nothing further to report on A24, Atomic Monster, 21 Laps and Chernin Entertainment’s The Backrooms at this time, but we’re very curious to see how things shake out on this one, and will be keeping our ear to the ground for further updates. Stay tuned for those just as soon as they roll in, folks.
