The machinery around Kane Parsons is already moving faster than the young filmmaker seems willing to move with it. After “Backrooms” exploded into a genuine box-office phenomenon for A24, the inevitable sequel conversation started almost immediately. A recent report suggested that a follow-up was already underway, with Parsons looking for a new writer. Speaking on “The Town” podcast, however, Parsons pushed back on at least part of that narrative.
Asked where he was on a “Backrooms” sequel, and whether he was looking for a writer, Parsons sounded surprised by the premise.
“I’m not sure where that got out,” Parsons said. “That seems more like a hallucination.”
That does not mean Parsons is finished with the world that made him one of the most closely watched young filmmakers in Hollywood. But it’s a useful reminder that the industry’s favorite reflex—take the breakout, build the franchise, lock in the next installment, start feeding the trades—may not line up neatly with the filmmaker’s own priorities.
And in fact, that might be the theme of the Town’s conversation with Parsons, who doesn’t seem at all interested in going down the traditional Hollywood route.
Regardless, the timing of it all is easy to understand. “Backrooms” stunned the industry over the weekend, giving A24 a massive commercial win and turning Parsons, who helped build the original “Backrooms” mythology through his viral YouTube work, into the kind of filmmaker studios immediately start circling around like vultures. For Hollywood, the question after a breakout like this is usually not whether another one is coming, but how quickly it can be assembled.
Parsons, though, does not sound especially eager to become a gun-for-hire inside someone else’s universe. Asked by Matthew Belloni whether any legacy IP interests him—“Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” or other major properties—Parsons largely waved it off, with a small caveat.
“No,” he said immediately in his response to being interested in a “Star Wars” or “Star Trek” film. “Barring like one or two things from my personal childhood, stuff from the early 2000s, like one or two things really,” Parsons said coyly about some smaller IP he’s interested in, before suggesting some of that may already be moving quietly. But beyond those exceptions, his answer was pretty blunt.
“Yeah, pretty much nothing,” he said. “I’m not too interested in IP work. I pretty much want to focus on original projects. I do this because it’s my way of processing life, as is art. And I typically find needing to step into someone else’s view of life tends to just kind of damage the initial point for me.”
For Parsons, the exception would be material that already shaped him deeply enough to feel personal. “The only ones I would look at are ones that have shaped my own experience of life so much that I feel like I have something to do with that conversation in the first place,” he said without naming any IP titles.
That answer tracks with how Parsons described his own creative intake. His influences, at least as he laid them out on the podcast, come less from a traditional cinephile canon than from the internet, science channels, games, and grounded science fiction. He cited Vsauce, Veritasium, and other science-minded creators as part of his formative media diet, and name-checked “Portal” and “Half-Life” as early touchstones before describing a more recent drift toward techno-thriller territory.
“I have found over time that I’m more interested in the grounded parts of science fiction that I can see and interact with in my actual own life in reality and less interested in the stuff that can veer into the fantastical,” Parsons said.
So, the “Backrooms” moment may be a massive franchise opportunity for A24 and everyone else around it, but Parsons is already talking like someone wary of letting the business define the art, which is heartening to hear, to be honest. There may well be more “Backrooms” ahead—the 29-year-old has said recently there are more stories to be told in that liminal space if he wants— but judging from his comments, Parsons seems more interested in protecting the source of the work than racing toward the next piece of IP.
