‘Backrooms’ Scores $118M Global Opening as Kane Parsons Becomes Youngest Director to Top Box Office

This is a historic weekend both for the box office and for horror movies thanks to A24/Chernin’s “Backrooms” and Focus Features’ “Obsession,” both of which are setting records for their respective studios and for Hollywood as a whole.

With a $118 million global opening, including an $81.4 million domestic launch that matches last weekend’s 3-day opening of Disney/Lucasfilm’s “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” “Backrooms” has not only become the biggest opening ever for A24 by a considerable margin, it has also become the highest opening ever for an original film from a debut director and has made 20-year-old Kane Parsons the youngest filmmaker ever to top the box office charts.

And like the 2023 video game adaptation “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” which opened to a similar $80 million in North America, “Backrooms” is drawing its audience almost entirely from younger audiences as 86% of moviegoers are under the age of 35, with 66% under the age of 25 and an astonishing 44% under the age of 21. For comparison, “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” with a near identical opening weekend total, had an under-25 audience share of 27%.

Even if this heavy skewing towards Gen Z and Gen Alpha, combined with good but not stellar audience scores like a B- on CinemaScore and 74% on Rotten Tomatoes leads to a more frontloaded theatrical run, “Backrooms” has already more than turned a theatrical profit and will easily pass the $191 million global total of “Marty Supreme” in the coming week to become A24’s highest grossing film ever.

And with a clear sequel hook at the end, “Backrooms” has everything it needs to become A24’s first tentpole franchise in its 13-year history.

With this strong opening for a horror film, one might think that the other horror title storming theaters right now, “Obsession,” would have its momentum undercut. Not so. In its third weekend, Curry Barker’s hit saw its weekend grosses increase yet again by 10% to $26.4 million for a running total of $104.7 million domestic, an all-time record for Focus Features, along with $148 million worldwide.

It’s an impressive figure considering that “Obsession” didn’t have the significant YouTube hype that “Backrooms” had before its release, as the buzz from its midnight TIFF premiere last year was largely confined to industry insiders and hardcore cinephiles.

But since its release, its disturbing story and Inde Navarrette’s star-making performance have made it a can’t-miss film that keeps finding new moviegoers and has allowed it to perform in a way that has only been seen in recent years by Angel’s 2023 indie hit “Sound of Freedom,” which “Obsession” is on pace to pass with a $200 million-plus domestic run.

There is also one big thread that connects this weekend’s two big horror hits: Blumhouse-Atomic Monster, Jason Blum and James Wan’s merged horror production studio. Atomic Monster was a co-producer on “Backrooms” alongside Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps and Peter Chernin’s North Road Entertainment, while Blumhouse co-produced “Obsession,” the lowest-budgeted film to pass $100 million domestically since Blum’s original claim to fame, “Paranormal Activity” in 2009.

But with this success, there is a flipside, as “The Mandalorian and Grogu” has dropped a steep 70% from its opening weekend to a $25 million second weekend, bringing its total to $137.4 million domestic and $246.6 million worldwide.

While families are still turning out for this feature follow-up to the hit “Star Wars” TV series, the general audience success of “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” particularly among the under-25 demographic, is clearly making its impact felt. And with the return of the horror parody series “Scary Movie” next weekend, that’s not going to change.

At this point, “Mandalorian and Grogu” has fallen behind the pace of the 2018 dud “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” and it is increasingly likely that it will fail to match that film’s $392 million global total.

More to come…