Hollywood’s New Scare Factory Is The Internet

The film industry has learned something that you discovered as a preteen: YouTube is awesome <3. Hollywood is dredging the platform for the next great horror movie after a couple of internet-generation filmmakers made two of the year’s most successful flicks.

ICYMI: Globally, Kane Parsons’s Backrooms grossed $400 million on a ~$10 million budget, four years after he posted a short film inspired by an eerie image of an empty room that had been circulating in the online world of “creepypasta,” aka user-generated horror fiction posted on sites like Reddit and 4chan. Similarly, fellow longtime YouTube filmmaker Curry Barker’s sub-$1-million budgeted Obsession was the first original movie of the 2020s to gross over $500 million, according to The Wrap.

Now, major studios want their ideas and talent:

• Less than two months after Backrooms came out, Puck reported that A24 offered Parsons a three-year $65 million deal for whatever he comes up with next, which would represent the studio’s largest deal ever.
• Weeks after Obsession hit theaters, Barker signed an eight-figure deal with Universal Film Group and Blumhouse Atomic Monster, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Since those two 20-somethings showed that the box office’s answer to franchise and remake fatigue could lie in the depths of the internet, filmmakers with similar backgrounds are fielding calls from studios:

• Following fierce bidding wars, at least five horror movies based on YouTube short films and creepypasta content are currently in development.
• Steven Spielberg, Jordan Peele, Warner Bros., and Lionsgate are among major names attached to the projects.

It pays to be popular: Some of these creators have built-in fandoms. Earlier this year, a low-budget horror movie from Mark Fischbach, who has 39 million YouTube subscribers, grossed more than $50 million after fans petitioned their local theaters to carry the movie.—ML

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