Matt Jarbo@mjarbo
There is a theory going around that Kane Parsons did not really direct *Backrooms*, and that the movie was secretly directed by Osgood Perkins or James Wan.
And I am sorry, but that feels like people trying to take this away from the kid before the movie even opens.
Kane Parsons is officially the director of *Backrooms*. James Wan produced it. Osgood Perkins produced it and served as a mentor during production.
That is not some conspiracy. That is what happens when a 19-year-old filmmaker gets handed his first feature film and experienced people help him navigate the process.
Especially when the entire reason the movie exists is because of Kane Parsons.
His Kane Pixels YouTube channel has more than 3 million subscribers with only 51 videos. His original *Backrooms (Found Footage)* short has over 78 million views. He made that video when he was 16 years old, and it was so good that Hollywood came calling almost immediately.
He did not randomly get handed somebody else’s movie.
He created the version of *The Backrooms* that people fell in love with.
And from everything Kane has talked about publicly, he was deeply involved in bringing that vision to the screen. He modeled the environments in Blender, helped design the massive 30,000-square-foot set, and described the movie as completely connected to the story he was already telling on YouTube.
Could James Wan and Osgood Perkins have helped him? Of course. They were producers. That is their job.
But there is a pretty big difference between mentoring a young filmmaker and secretly directing his movie for him.
And the really wild part is that *Backrooms* is currently tracking for a $20–30 million domestic opening weekend.
For context, *Civil War* currently holds A24’s biggest domestic opening at $25.7 million.
So there is a very real chance that a 20-year-old YouTube creator, adapting the weird little horror universe he started building as a teenager, could open one of the biggest movies in A24 history.
Maybe the movie works. Maybe it does not.
But let the guy have his movie before inventing a conspiracy that somebody more famous must have made it for him.
