Key Points
- A24's "Backrooms" opened to $81 million domestic and $118 million worldwide.
- It more than tripled A24's prior record, "Civil War" at $25.5 million in 2024.
- Director Kane Parsons, 20, is the youngest filmmaker to top the box office.
- 88% of opening-weekend moviegoers were under 35; roughly two-thirds were under 25.
A24 just had the biggest weekend in its history, and it came from an internet myth. "Backrooms" opened to $81 million across 3,442 North American theaters and $118 million worldwide — shattering the studio's previous opening-weekend record, Alex Garland's "Civil War" ($25.5 million in 2024), by more than triple.
The film adapts the Backrooms, the liminal-space horror concept that spread across the internet before Kane Parsons first brought it to life in a viral YouTube series as a teenager. Parsons is now 20, and the opening makes him the youngest filmmaker ever to top the box office — and gives "Backrooms" the largest debut ever for an original film from a first-time director. It is the rare horror property that arrived with a built-in audience of millions who'd already lived inside its world online.
That audience showed up in person. A24 reported that 88% of opening-weekend moviegoers were under 35 and roughly two-thirds were under 25 — the kind of age skew studios spend nine figures of marketing trying to manufacture. Here it was native. The generation that turned a yellow-wallpapered office void into a shared myth treated the theatrical release as the next room to explore.
For A24, the number reframes what the studio is. It built its name on prestige and arthouse risk — the same instinct behind A24 swings like "Marty Supreme," its second-biggest debut. "Backrooms" proves it can also open a movie at blockbuster scale, on internet-born IP, with a debut director and no stars. The playbook for the next decade of horror may have just been rewritten by a 20-year-old who started on YouTube.
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