Why The Backrooms Director Won't Direct Star Wars

Got to be honest, if you told me a 20-year-old YouTuber would be fielding questions about whether he fancies helming the next Star Wars or Star Trek, I might have raised an eyebrow. Yet here we are. Kane Parsons, the chap behind that viral fever-dream of a horror flick, 'Backrooms', has made it abundantly clear he is not queuing up to take over your favourite long-running space franchise.

Not the IP Work Type

All sorts of rumours have popped up since 'Backrooms' became a box office surprise, raking in an utterly bonkers $140 million worldwide (according to Box Office Mojo, no less). Speculation was quick to start: would Parsons be snatched up for some mega-franchise, perhaps even Disney’s perennial money-printing galaxy far, far away? The answer, as it turns out, is a definite no.

He straight up told Matt Belloni on the podcast 'The Town' that he has zero interest in steering someone else’s nostalgia machine. In his words:

'No, I’m not too interested in IP work. I pretty much entirely want to focus on original projects. Just because I do this, because it’s my way of processing life, as is art, and I typically find needing to step into someone else’s view of life tends to just kind of damage the initial point for me.'

Childhood Favourites? Maybe, But Don’t Count on It

Now, Parsons didn’t slam the door entirely shut on franchise films. There’s a soft, hard-to-hear caveat: “I think barring like one or two things from my personal childhood, stuff from the early 2000s, like one or two things really, without naming them out loud. The only ones I would look at are ones that have shaped my own experience of life so much that I feel like I have something to do with that conversation in the first place.” Translate that out of film-student-speak, and it means you won’t see him doing Star Wars unless it meant an awful lot to him growing up. He isn’t saying what those one or two exceptions are, and good luck prying it out of him.

No Rush On the Sequel Front

As for 'Backrooms' itself, you’d assume every studio on earth is pestering him about a sequel. Don’t get your hopes up. Rumours have cropped up that he’s hunting for a screenwriter for a potential follow up, but Parsons has swatted those away as well: 'I’m not sure where that got out… That seems more like a hallucinated [thing].'

Timeline: How We Got Here

• Parsons, all of 20, goes from YouTube oddity to nationwide horror hit with 'Backrooms', released 29 May.
• The film clears $140 million globally, confounding nearly every prediction.
• Franchise speculation kicks off – Star Wars, Star Trek, the lot.
• He clarifies in an interview that he’s got no interest in big IP work – unless there’s a personal connection from his own childhood.
• Rumblings of a 'Backrooms' sequel start up, Parsons says that idea’s come from thin air.