In Hollywood, the pipeline from film school to studio gigs is well-established. The pipeline from YouTube to A24? That's new.
Kane Parsons is 19 years old. His Backrooms series on YouTube has racked up over 100 million views. Now he's making a theatrical feature with one of the most prestigious indie studios in the business. This is what it looks like when Hollywood realizes the old gatekeepers are irrelevant.
The Backrooms originated as an internet creepypasta—the idea of endless, fluorescent-lit office spaces that exist outside reality. Parsons turned that concept into genuinely unsettling short films using Blender and a teenager's budget. Studios noticed. A24 gave him a feature.
This is the Gen Z filmmaker pipeline: build an audience online, prove you can execute a vision on minimal resources, then get studio backing to scale up. It's how Jordan Peele went from sketch comedy to Get Out. It's how the Duffer Brothers parlayed a rejected script into Stranger Things. Prove the concept, then get the money.
What makes Parsons' story notable isn't just his age—it's that he bypassed every traditional step. No film school. No short films on the festival circuit. No years grinding as a PA. Just viral horror content that demonstrated he understood atmosphere, pacing, and how to scare people.
A24 has made a business out of elevated genre fare and discovering new voices. Hereditary, The Witch, Midsommar—these were calling cards for directors who understood that horror is the best sandbox for filmmakers with something to prove.
Will Backrooms work at feature length? That's the question. Internet-native concepts don't always translate to 90-minute narratives. But betting against a director who built a massive audience by the time he could legally drink seems foolish.
