Two films from first-time directors who learned their craft on YouTube have together generated roughly half a billion dollars at the global box office, forcing an industry reckoning with where directing talent actually comes from. “Backrooms,” from 20-year-old Kane Parsons, has crossed $250 million worldwide. “Obsession,” from 26-year-old Curry Barker, is closing in on $300 million. Both directors are in their 20s. Neither arrived through a film school or a studio apprenticeship.
A Finite Pool of Attention — and What Competes for It
Zlatan Vukić, an iGaming compliance manager with around eight years of experience tracking Croatia’s online entertainment and betting market, sees the box office results of these digital-native releases as evidence of a broader contest that plays out daily on screens across the region.
The point, in his reading, is not simply that YouTubers can make movies. It is that any film chasing audience time and discretionary spending is entering a crowded arena. Per Sfchronicle, the success of these releases reflects the depth of the relationship digital creators build with their audiences before a single theater ticket is sold. Vukić observes that in the Croatian online market, kladionice pull on the same finite pool of attention and spending that a YouTuber-led release is competing for — making them a measurable rival category that any creator counting on loyal audience time has to win out against.
He grounds that observation in two concrete data points. Markiplier’s self-distributed “Iron Lung,” made for under $5 million, grossed more than $50 million without studio infrastructure — proof that the competition for viewer time is real and consequential. And Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chair Mike De Luca’s reasoning about why studios pursue digital creators, that their audiences have already participated in the creative process long before release, confirms that the pre-built relationship is now treated as a structural asset, not a lucky accident.
“The pre-built audience isn’t just a marketing shortcut — it’s evidence that these creators have already been competing for attention, and winning, in the same contested digital space where every other category of online entertainment lives.”
From an $800 Horror Short to a $250 Million Feature
Kane Parsons began posting videos online at age 9. Growing up in Petaluma, California, he built a YouTube series around the creepypasta Backrooms meme — a low-fi internet horror concept that spread virally across forums and video platforms. That series led directly to his A24 feature debut, now titled “Backrooms,” which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve and has earned $250 million worldwide. A sequel is already in development.
Curry Barker’s path was more tactile. The Mobile, Alabama native made a found-footage horror film called “Milk & Serial” for $800. That short caught the attention of Tea Shop Productions, which saw his follow-up short “The Chair” and agreed to finance a new project, “Obsession,” for $750,000. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Focus Features acquired it for $15 million. It is now tracking toward $300 million in worldwide ticket sales. Barker has since completed “Anything But Ghosts” for Blumhouse Productions, and A24 has tapped him to direct a reboot of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
The Broader Wave of Platform-Native Directors
The Parsons and Barker stories are the sharpest examples, but the wave is wider. Markiplier — real name Mark Fischbach, 36 years old, with more than 38 million YouTube subscribers — self-distributed “Iron Lung,” a sci-fi horror film based on a 2022 video game, and it grossed more than $50 million on a budget under $5 million. The film required no studio, no acquisitions deal, and no festival circuit.
Jordan Firstman, 34, broke through with Instagram Live comedy during the pandemic and made his directorial debut with “Club Kid” at Cannes in May. A bidding war ended with A24 acquiring it for $17 million. Dylan Clark, who has spent eight years posting horror shorts on YouTube from northern Virginia, saw his most popular short, “Portrait of God,” picked up for feature development with Jordan Peele and Sam Raimi producing. Lionsgate and Blumhouse have also enlisted Clark to direct a new “Blair Witch Project.” In April, Neon announced that Sam Evenson will direct a feature adaptation of his viral 12-minute short “Mora,” which has accumulated nearly 5 million views on his Grimoire Horror YouTube channel. Roy Lee, producer of “Weapons,” is producing. Evenson holds visual effects credits on “Dune: Part Two” and “The Last of Us.”
The range of festival-recognized independent films emerging from this generation reflects a structural shift in how directing careers begin — and how quickly a short-form online body of work can translate into a feature deal. Hollywood executives are now actively scouring YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for directing talent, a search that has precedent in earlier-generation creators like Issa Rae and Bo Burnham, both of whom built online followings before crossing into film and television.
Warner Bros. Names the Logic Behind the Studio Push
The industry’s appetite for platform-native directors is not simply a bet on youth or novelty. Mike De Luca, co-chair of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, articulated the underlying rationale at a conference last month, offering the clearest statement yet of why studios are competing to sign creators with established digital audiences.
“These filmmakers are in a dialogue with their audience from the word ‘Go’. Their subscribers have direct input in each iteration of these things. By the time you get to the movie, they’ve had a billion test screenings.”
De Luca’s framing redefines audience development as something that happens before production, not after. The creator’s feed becomes, in effect, a years-long feedback loop — one that conventional development cannot replicate. Hollywood executives are drawing on that logic as they scan platforms for the next hire, and the pattern of acquisitions suggests they are finding what they are looking for.
With Barker’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot now in the pipeline alongside a Backrooms sequel already in development, the structural shift these films represent is not slowing. The directors who built audiences one video at a time are now being handed franchises.
You may also like:
Leave a reply