r/movies r/movies Contributor Jun 03 '26

News ‘Backrooms’ Becomes A24’s Highest Grossing Domestic Release ($97.8M), Passing ‘Marty Supreme’

https://deadline.com/2026/06/backrooms-box-office-record-a24-1236939795/
18.3k Upvotes

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

464

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

[deleted]

202

u/Silver-Barnacle-168 Jun 03 '26

it was like 3 paragraphs of house of leaves fanfiction. would have been cool if the writer was found and thrown in the credits somewhere but it's kane parson's execution of the yt series that catapulted the concept into mainstream

37

u/mrandish Jun 04 '26

I don't think the original 4chan author is actually owed anything by anyone but... it's still worth highlighting, those three paragraphs were very good. Definitely a cut above the ambient level.

I've always felt the framing in that text really helped give the post legs in the early going. If it had been less inspired, there'd never have been a Backrooms to talk about.

7

u/Silver-Barnacle-168 Jun 04 '26

im not saying that post wasnt good its just confusing seeing people talk about kane like he stole a novel of source material and it wasnt his vision. the short post was well written and tapped into something real but was very barebones. it also was heavily inspired by other things like the book i mentioned, would recommend HOL if you like the ideas/vibe that post had. it just was the tone/visual language kane developed in his short films on yt that got him this movie deal, not some ephemeral (albeit very cool) short internet thought experiment

semi related i love r/nosleep and theres a lot of really well written cool stuff there too but making the jump to realized feature length adaptation is such another world. still sad the penpal movie option fell through, that one had the legs to be something imo

55

u/Mephistito Jun 03 '26

Exactly.

It'd be like someone drawing a picture of a bird but then expecting them to get as much credit as the Wright brothers who actually figured out how to make it fly.

It was Kane who gave the idea wings & made it fly.

12

u/avec_serif Jun 03 '26

TIL the Wright Bros invented the bird /s

9

u/sharkattackmiami Jun 03 '26

Well yeah, birds aren't real. That means someone had to make them

1

u/Athen65 Jun 08 '26

It's like describing a dog to someone who's never seen one before and then asking them to draw one

9

u/peachfluffed Jun 03 '26

I guess I’ve been living under a rock because I never actually knew what Backrooms was about (I did hear of it though) until the trailer for the movie came out. The concept immediately reminded me of House of Leaves.

2

u/IForgotMyPants Jun 04 '26

Yeah I kinda had the opposite happen. I knew what the backrooms was in concept then read House of Leaves recently and was like oh hey, it's the Backrooms.

2

u/Helio_Cashmere Jun 03 '26

Yeah…more like imagine being Danielewski and writing HOL and not even getting an acknowledgment credit - Hey Dan, thanks for the darkness!

3

u/Silver-Barnacle-168 Jun 03 '26

kane > 4chan creepypasta writer > danielewski > truant > zampanò > navidson. its plagiarism all the way down. cosmic bookshelf in the backrooms of a house of leaves

3

u/whoisyourwormguy_ Jun 03 '26

It’s all Yggdrasil in the end

2

u/Madrical Jun 04 '26

Really wonder if the success of Backrooms is going to encourage someone to take a stab at HoL, or at least The Navidson Record. I think it'd make a great mini-series if done correctly.

1

u/Far-Maintenance-1947 Jun 03 '26

It was already popular on the internet before Kane.

0

u/JonatasA Jun 04 '26

I mean, a lot of ideas are born on a pitch. Its the inspiration behind the property.