3 Box Office Records A24’s Backrooms Could Shatter — Including One Held by Steven Spielberg

Here’s a fun one for horror fans and film nerds alike. A24 — the indie studio with a habit for hits and the odd left-field Oscar winner — are banking on a creepy new film called 'Backrooms' to seriously shake up the box office. A few quirks and curious records are in play here, so let’s get into the weeds on why this weird little horror movie could go down in history, and not just for giving you existential dread at 2am.

‘Backrooms’: From Internet Oddity to Cinemas Everywhere

Right, picture this: ‘Backrooms’ started as an internet creepypasta, then turned into a surreal YouTube series courtesy of Kane Parsons, and now it’s a fully-fledged A24 movie. The premise is just as odd as you’d expect — apparently, a therapist’s patient vanishes into some alternate dimension, and she heads in after him. Feels like reality’s broken, which is rather apt.

If you’re curious about the people involved, quite a solid cast has been assembled:

• Chiwetel Ejiofor
• Renate Reinsve
• Mark Duplass
• Finn Bennett
• Lukita Maxwell

This thing lands in cinemas 29 May, and early numbers suggest it could be an absolute monster at the tills — or at the very least, a record-breaker on several fronts.

Box Office Predictions: Buckle Up

So, here’s where it gets interesting. The budget? Roughly $10 million — classic A24 frugality. The opening weekend forecast? Depending on who you ask, anywhere from $25 million to $33 million at the US box office, but if advanced ticket sales mean anything, $40 million isn’t out of the question. The number the industry is quietly bracing for: $31 million. Not bad for a film that started its life as urban legend internet fodder.

And if ‘Backrooms’ even hits the lower end of that — say, $26 million — it’d still dethrone current A24 champion ‘Civil War’ (which managed $25.5 million its first weekend out). For context, here are the studio’s current opening weekend records:

• 'Civil War': $25.5 million
• 'Marty Supreme': $17.7 million ($28.3m over four days, thanks to a snug holiday slot)
• 'The Drama': $14.4 million
• 'Hereditary': $13.5 million
• 'Materialists': $11.3 million

‘Backrooms’ is poised to blow past the lot — even without the benefit of a holiday weekend.

Kane Parsons: 20 Years Old and Staring Down Spielberg’s Old Record

Here’s the bit that might catch a few headlines. Kane Parsons, director of ‘Backrooms’, is just 20 years old. If the film tops the US box office on opening weekend (and at this point, it would take something dramatic to stop it), Parsons will become the youngest filmmaker ever to claim that spot. For comparison: Josh Trank was the last to set this record, being 27 when his film ‘Chronicle’ hit number one in 2012. Before Trank, Spielberg of all people had owned this bit of trivia, after ‘Jaws’ opened at number one back in 1975, and he was 28 at the time.

This sort of thing makes you feel old very quickly if you’re over twenty. Or even if you’re not.

Could ‘Backrooms’ Be A24’s All-Time Box Office Champion?

A24 have had their share of box office successes, but the current all-timer is ‘Marty Supreme’, which raked in $96 million in the States and $191 million around the world. ‘Backrooms’ is already being watched as a serious contender, at least domestically. The worldwide crown’s a much tougher ask because those numbers are a different beast, but if ‘Backrooms’ can manage a US opening anywhere from $30 million up to $50 million, you can pencil it in for the studio’s domestic top slot before summer’s out. Even a $35 million debut would stick it firmly in A24’s top ten highest earners at home.

For a film about wandering endless beige corridors and creeping existential horror, that’s not your average Hollywood fairy tale. Let’s see if it lives up to the bizarre hype.