The Two Films Producers Keep Bringing Up Came From YouTube

At industry events over the past three months, Variety reports, major producers and executives have raised the same two titles: Kane Parsons' “Backrooms” and Curry Barker's “Obsession.” Both were directed by filmmakers in their twenties who came out of YouTube, and both blew past box-office expectations while pulling in droves of Gen Z audiences — Variety's account of the phenomenon, not a verdict on the films themselves. “Backrooms” and “Obsession” are fiction; the chatter around them is the news here, not a claim that either is good. Anyone who has sat through a wildly overperforming movie can supply their own counterexample to the equation of box office and quality. The name is funny and the number isn't. What the business may be reading in that pairing is a change in where directors come from — a pipeline whose entrants did not need a studio's permission to be seen. Two caveats are worth keeping. “Exceeded expectations” is a claim about forecasts, not about quality; a film can beat the model and still be forgettable. And the hunger for a generational-shift story is permanent in Hollywood, which announces a new one roughly every time the previous audience ages out. What would make this more than a talking point is what these directors do next, and whether the studios that spent three months discussing them change how they buy and release films.