Kane Parsons reveals the one thing he feared Hollywood would take from Backrooms

Film Shrine spoke with Kane Parsons about his Backrooms movie, which has proven to be not only a huge success for A24 but another shining example of the changing of the guard in Hollywood.

At just 16 years old, Kane launched his now-viral YouTube shorts, and not long after he was contacted by a Hollywood assistant to talk about adapting his horror sci-fi world for the big screen.

It was the right decision. In just 10 days, Backrooms has beaten Marty Supreme’s 126-day run, earning $212.6million against a reported $10million budget and becoming A24’s highest grossing film of all time.

We were able to catch up with the filmmaker ahead of Backrooms’ release, where we asked if there was a level of pressure to cater to both fans of his original YouTube shorts and newcomers.

Kane admitted there was some pressure, but not necessarily from fans.

Instead, the filmmaker explained that his biggest concern was preserving the unique voice and sense of authorship that had made Backrooms such a phenomenon in the first place.

“I think there’s a level of pressure, but more so for myself,” he explained. “I try to make what feels naturally compelling to me, what I have a natural intuition to try to make.”

Since he had spent years building the Backrooms universe, Kane said working on the film itself felt like a natural extension of what he’d already been doing.

The real challenge came when the project expanded beyond a one-man YouTube operation and into a major studio production involving writers, producers, and executives.

“There’s a huge risk of losing that sense of authorship,” he said. “That mindset that I was talking about – that is not really a common or at all prevalent way of thinking about this stuff in the industry.”

Kane stressed that he wasn’t criticising the people involved in the adaptation process, noting there are “very fair reasons” why films are developed the way they are. But he remained “very much precious” about protecting the elements that had made Backrooms resonate with millions of viewers online.

One area he found particularly hard was the scriptwriting process. “It’s very hard to have a script from someone who’s not been living with this for a few years and is not part of that group,” he explained.

“It’s very hard for that in all creative positions, although especially the script is probably the single point of contact that is the most critical.

“It’s very hard to act as though they are somehow obligated to consume all of this information and be aware of all of this stuff because that’s not a fair ask for another human being who’s just doing a job.”

Ultimately, Kane believes the team found the right balance, describing the screenplay as remaining “fairly fluid” throughout development as they worked to ensure it lived up to the standards set by his original Backrooms series.

Reflecting on the experience, he noted that passion remains one of the most important ingredients in any creative project.

“I do find that when obsession is there behind the system of an art project, you get some pretty neat stuff,” he said.

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Featured image credit: A24/Instagram