Backrooms Opens to $81.4M, A24's Biggest Debut Ever
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Backrooms opened to $81.4M domestic and $118M worldwide, the biggest opening in A24's 14-year history and easily clearing Star Wars: Mandalorian and Grogu's $81.6M debut last weekend.
- Kane Parsons, now 20, becomes the youngest filmmaker with a No. 1 opening, surpassing Josh Trank's record set with Chronicle at age 27 in 2011.
- The under-$10M production was co-financed by A24, Chernin Entertainment, Blumhouse-Atomic Monster, Shawn Levy's 21 Laps, and Odd Fellow — with a marketing spend compared to Neon's Longlegs (also under $10M).
- The audience skewed heavily young, with 88% under 35, an average age of 25.2, and 62% male; A24 internal polls show 50% came because it was an A24 film and 58% came for the Backrooms creepypasta.
- Blumhouse-Atomic Monster holds the top two domestic spots for the first time, with three films in the top 10 once Mortal Kombat II is counted.
- Mandalorian and Grogu fell 69% in its second weekend to $25M domestic — potentially the worst second-weekend drop for a Star Wars film, worse than Solo: A Star Wars Story's 65% fall.
- Obsession rose 10% in its third weekend to $26.4M, hitting $104.7M domestic and becoming the highest-grossing Focus Features release ever stateside, beating Downton Abbey's $97M.
Why it matters: A sub-$10M horror film built on internet IP nearly matched a $100M+ Disney Star Wars marketing push, proving digitally-native fandom can deliver at-scale openings without blockbuster P&A. For A24, this cements a path to tentpole-level launches; for Disney, the 69% second-weekend crash on Mandalorian and Grogu — worse than Solo — suggests a finite core audience for this particular spinoff rather than audience theft from Backrooms and Obsession.
