A24’s Backrooms has crossed $350 million at the global box office, reaching the milestone on July 6 after 37 days in theatres. The film’s worldwide total now stands at $357 million and is still climbing, making it not just a surprise hit but one of the most remarkable box office stories of the year. For a film made on a $10 million budget by a director who first found his audience through YouTube short videos, what Backrooms has achieved is genuinely extraordinary.
Backrooms opened in U.S. theatres on May 29 and immediately announced itself as something different. Its global opening weekend brought in $118 million. From there, the film did not slow down the way most horror films tend to after their first big weekend. It crossed $200 million, then $300 million, and now $350 million in relatively quick succession. Every week, it continued to earn more than expected, particularly in international markets where horror has historically been harder to sell at this scale.
Backrooms was directed by Kane Parsons, who came to the world of feature filmmaking through the internet. He first built a dedicated online following through a series of viral short films set in the Backrooms, an internet horror concept built around the unsettling idea of endlessly looping empty spaces that exist behind the walls of normal reality. That same atmosphere of dread and disorientation runs through the feature film, which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead role. A24 produced and distributed the film, and the bet it took on Parsons has paid off on a scale the studio could barely have imagined when it greenlit the project.
Backrooms is now A24’s biggest film ever, both in the United States and globally. That is a significant achievement for a studio that has been responsible for some of the most acclaimed films of the past decade, from Everything Everywhere All at Once to Midsommar, Hereditary, and Aftersun. None of those films came close to these kinds of commercial numbers. Backrooms has not just surpassed them, but completely redefined the studio’s box office ceiling. Across individual territories, the film now stands as A24’s highest-grossing release of all time in China, France, Russia and the CIS, Poland, Thailand, and Taiwan.
The international performance of Backrooms has been just as remarkable as its domestic run. In China, the film is approaching $15 million and declined by only 12% in its most recent weekend. In France, it overtook Marty Supreme as A24’s biggest film ever and dropped just 22% over the weekend. Germany is one of the few markets where the film has actually been gaining momentum. It increased 5% weekend over weekend and earned $1.1 million in its latest frame. In Taiwan, the total stands at $2.5 million, with a decline of only 26%. Across the Benelux region—covering Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands—the total gross has reached $4 million, with the Netherlands recording a weekend-over-weekend drop of just 9%, while Belgium and Luxembourg have each crossed the €1 million mark.
Backrooms does not exist in isolation. Two weeks before it opened, another film, Obsession, directed by Curry Barker—another filmmaker who built his name on YouTube—debuted and also became a massive hit. Obsession has now crossed $404.4 million globally, putting it just ahead of Backrooms in what has become one of the most talked-about box office rivalries of the summer. Both films arrived from outside the traditional studio system. Both were built on internet audiences and online-born storytelling. And both have fundamentally changed the conversation about what independent horror can achieve commercially.
For A24, Backrooms has opened a door that cannot be closed again. The studio has always been respected for its artistic ambition. Now, it also has proof that its films can compete at the very top of the commercial market. For Kane Parsons, the journey from viral YouTube shorts to directing A24’s biggest film ever is exactly the kind of story Hollywood loves to tell. And for audiences, Backrooms is a reminder that the most exciting films do not always come from the most expected places.
The film is still playing in theatres. The question now is whether it can close the gap on Obsession and push past $400 million. At the rate it is going, that is no longer an impossible ask.
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