LOS ANGELES, September 22 — A24 has its first $400 million movie. “Backrooms,” the low-budget horror film directed by YouTuber Kane Parsons, crossed $400 million worldwide after nearly four months in theaters, Variety reported on September 20. By the numbers: $197.5 million domestic, $202.57 million international, $400.07 million global.
Production budget: $10 million. That makes “Backrooms” the highest-grossing release in A24’s history and one of the most profitable films of the year.
The previous record holder, “Marty Supreme,” had topped out at $192 million.
A record debut, and a record age
Parsons was 20 years old when “Backrooms” opened at No. 1 domestically, making him the youngest filmmaker ever to debut in first place. The mark he broke belonged to Josh Trank, who was 27 when “Chronicle” opened at No. 1 in 2012 with $22 million. The opening itself was a company landmark.
“Backrooms” delivered A24’s biggest debut with $81 million domestically and $118 million worldwide, more than tripling the studio’s previous domestic opening record of $25.5 million, set by Alex Garland’s 2024 thriller “Civil War.” Word-of-mouth and Gen Z enthusiasm carried the film from there, and the run lifted A24 to its biggest summer ever: $237 million in total summer box office.
That placed the independent distributor fourth among all distributors for the season, ahead of Paramount ($192 million) and Warner Bros. ($165 million), and behind Universal ($1.12 billion), Sony ($978.8 million) and Disney ($664 million).
A summer that rewrote the indie playbook
An independent outgrossing major studios during the summer moviegoing season is a rare outcome, and “Backrooms” was not the only low-budget horror title to manage it. “Obsession,” directed by 26-year-old Curry Barker, has generated $516 million globally on a production budget of $750,000. Focus Features, owned by Universal, released that film.
Together, the two releases challenged the conventional wisdom that younger audiences had stopped going to the movies. Investors will note the margins.
A $10 million production that returns $400.07 million worldwide is the kind of multiple that reshapes how studios weigh mid-budget genre bets, and A24 now has a franchise-scale hit built from a YouTube creator’s source material. What to watch next: whether A24 moves quickly to lock Parsons into a follow-up, and whether the “Backrooms” and “Obsession” pairing pushes rival distributors toward their own low-cost horror slates before next summer.
