‘Backrooms’ Director Kane Parsons Had to Choose Between College Apps and an A24 Deal
Kane Parsons, a young filmmaker, has released his film 'Backrooms' with A24, adapting his viral YouTube series. At just 17 years old, he was mentored by notable figures in the industry and has created a unique blend of online horror and traditional filmmaking. Parsons views his work as a combination of engineering and art, reflecting his internet upbringing and innovative approach to storytelling.
- ▪Kane Parsons directed 'Backrooms', which is expected to be one of the highest-grossing A24 movies.
- ▪He was only 17 when he was tapped by A24 to adapt his viral YouTube series.
- ▪Parsons has been influenced by mentors like James Wan and Osgood Perkins in his filmmaking journey.
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| Original publisher | IndieWire |
| Canonical URL | https://www.indiewire.com/features/interviews/kane-parsons-backrooms-interview-1235196224/ |
| Publication time | Tue, 26 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-26T13:07:49.469Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-26T13:07:49.469Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | rDlYix7LJxSo · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
It’s hard to think of many people currently living a more interesting life than Kane Parsons. With the release of “Backrooms” this weekend, the YouTuber-turned-filmmaker might be on pace to have directed one of the highest-grossing A24 movies of all time before he can legally drink. The indie studio tapped Parsons to adapt his viral YouTube series of the same name (itself based on a viral creepypasta about liminal spaces) when he was just 17 years old. The young filmmaker was mentored by the likes of James Wan and Osgood Perkins as he figured out how to fit a sprawling, open-source online IP into the confines of a major theatrical film.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at IndieWire.
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