There are so many impressive ways to frame this past weekend’s box office dominance of Backrooms that it’s honestly hard to focus on just one. The biggest opening weekend for any movie in A24 history, for starters. The youngest director (Kane Parsons) ever to have a #1 movie at the box office. History being made. Records shattered. The list seems to go on and on.
But the most impressive way to frame this one, if you’re asking me, is as follows. Not only did Backrooms just secure a top 5 highest grossing opening weekend for any horror movie in the history of cinema, but it’s now the highest opening for any original horror movie in history.
We could argue all week about whether or not Backrooms, which is based on young filmmaker Kane Parsons’ own viral YouTube universe, is actually an original property or at this point can be considered IP in its own right, but I’d personally have a hard time calling Parsons’ debut feature anything but an original horror movie that will very likely NOW become franchise IP.
But before we start talking about Backrooms 2 and Backrooms 3, let’s take a moment to fully appreciate just how game-changing and ground-breaking it is for the 20-year-old filmmaker to debut on the scene with an opening weekend so astronomically high for a low-budget ($10 million) movie that Backrooms‘ opening weekend matched the opening weekend for Star Wars movie The Mandalorian & Grogu, a mega budget blockbuster with a mega budget marketing campaign that included a Burger King promotion across the entire goddamn country!
Released into 3,442 theaters across the U.S. by A24, Backrooms scared up a reported $81.4 million across its opening weekend to become #1 at the box office, with the film’s worldwide total already hitting a staggering $118 million at the time of this article being written.
For the sake of comparison, Scream 7 – the highest grossing installment in that particular franchise – ended its monstrous opening weekend with $63.6 million, while big budget sequel Mortal Kombat II just recently made $38 million in its own U.S. opening. For Backrooms to debut with $81 million, well, it’s safe to say Hollywood is in a state of shock at the moment.
To reiterate the most striking record that Backrooms just broke, it’s now the highest grossing opening weekend for an original horror movie in history. Even if we open that list up to include non-original horror movies, including IT (2017), Backrooms is still very near the top of that list. It’s already on path to become one of the biggest horror movies of all time at the box office.
With the one-two punch of Obsession and Backrooms coming along and getting young audiences to pack into theaters, it would seem horror’s new generation has officially arrived. Stay tuned for more box office reporting on both smash hit horror movies in the days to come.
And read our Backrooms movie review now!
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in Backrooms as the owner of Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, who discovers a strange doorway in the basement of the furniture showroom. He sets out to explore the mysterious, liminal space, walking headfirst into a creepypasta nightmare.
Renate Reinsve (A Different Man) also stars in Backrooms.
YouTube prodigy Kane Parsons makes his feature directorial debut based on his creepypasta-inspired video series, which debuted in 2022 and has amassed over 190 million views to date.
The origins of the Backrooms, however, date back even further…
