Two horror movies directed by YouTubers topped the box office this weekend, with Backrooms taking No. 1 and Obsession landing at No. 2. The result gave A24 a rare one-two finish built not on star power, but on filmmakers who made their names online.
Backrooms, a feature film expansion of Kane Parsons’ YouTube series, made $38 million on Friday and is expected to finish the domestic weekend with $80 million to $90 million. That would clear A24’s previous opening record of $25.7 million for Civil War, and it would do so by a wide margin. For a studio that has built a reputation on breakouts, the scale of this launch is the kind of number that changes how Hollywood looks at creators who started on the platform.
Obsession was not far behind. Curry Barker’s horror film made $8 million on Friday and was estimated to haul $28.5 million over the weekend, a result made more striking by the fact that it earned more in its second weekend than in its first. Its third weekend was also set to grow another 19 percent, and The Hollywood Reporter said that made it the first film since 1982 to rise on both its second and third weekends. That kind of hold is rare for any movie, and almost unheard of for one that began life with YouTube roots.
Barker’s rise helps explain why this weekend matters beyond the box office chart. He released the hourlong found footage horror film Milk & Serial on YouTube in 2024, has already shot his next film and is set to direct a new remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The speed of that climb mirrors what happened earlier this year with Iron Lung, directed by YouTube star Mark Fischbach, better known as Markiplier, which grossed nearly $41 million domestically.
Rutgers Cinema general manager Mark DelVecchio said lots of YouTubers have tried to make the leap to mainstream movies and come up short, even as Parsons, Barker and Fischbach show longevity. He said some of them have been making videos for a very long time, and that is how they develop a loyal audience that will follow them. This weekend suggested that audience is no longer just clicking: it is buying tickets in enough volume to lead the box office.
The question now is how long the momentum lasts. Backrooms has already rewritten A24’s ceiling, and Obsession’s unusually strong second and third weekends suggest the audience for YouTube-born horror may not be a one-weekend burst. If that holds, this will not read as a novelty chart. It will read as a business model.
