The nice Gen Z genre land grab is in full swing.
Mere months after Obsession and Backrooms stormed the summer box office, Hollywood studios have been throwing hundreds of thousands at Web-fluent horror filmmakers and online-native IP in a battle for the dollars, eyeballs and hearts (in that order) of Gen Z viewers.
Essentially the most urgent example today is Backrooms director Kane Parsons, whose $10 million film stands a A24’s top-grossing movie ever with $374 million globally. He’s within the midst of a full-court press from multiple power players who need to secure the 21-year-old auteur’s future work.
As first reported by Puck, sources confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that in recent weeks, Warner Bros. bosses Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy flew to Parsons’ home within the Bay Area, where he lives along with his mother, to court the filmmaker. On Thursday, he partook in a Zoom with HBO boss Casey Bloys and head of drama and HBO movies Francesca Orsi, because the proposed cope with Warners would encompass film and TV.
Universal chief Donna Langley has also met with Parsons, after successfully wooing Obsession filmmaker Curry Barker for his next movie. A24, meanwhile, very much doesn’t need to lose him, and per Puck is courting him for a Backrooms sequel in addition to one other original project.
It’s unclear why A24 hadn’t inked a cope with Parsons prior to the discharge of Backrooms, though it is thought that Parsons fully owns the IP, which began life as a series of YouTube shorts.
A24 has long been known for breaking recent directing talent, like Robert Eggers (The Witch), Ari Aster (Hereditary) and Celine Song (Past Lives). And while some directors, like Aster and Song, have stayed loyal to the studio, other filmmakers like Eggers and Every thing In every single place All At Once filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert have signed deals with larger, more moneyed operations. Eggers’s house is now the Universal specialty label Focus, while the Daniels signed a pre-best picture, five-year cope with Universal.
Splashy deals for online creators have intensified this 12 months, but kicked off in earnest in on the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, when A24 beat out Universal and other studios with a seven-figure deal to land Seek advice from Me, the Australian horror movie from first-time feature filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou. Sources have said other studios, including Uni and Warners, attempted to court the YouTubers-turned-horror filmmakers for his or her follow-up film, but A24 was ultimately in a position to land the administrators’ next film, 2025’s Bring Her Back, and put a Seek advice from Me sequel into development. In fact, studios would still wish to work with them to today, with Warners said to be particularly high on the duo.
Possibly with a purpose to stave off filmmaker attrition, sources tell THR that previously few years, A24 has asked that a first-look at a filmmaker’s second project be baked into the deal for his or her first. This appears to not have been the case with Parsons and Backrooms.
The feeding frenzy for Parsons follows the same hunt to land Obsession director Barker’s next original project. His Obsession follow-up Anything But Ghosts is already shot and is at Focus, with the studio landing that project after acquiring Obsession out of last 12 months’s Toronto Film Festival. But, in the midst of Obsession’s epic, $400 million box office run, a rival studio offered Barker an astounding $10 million deal for his next original project, sight unseen. Ultimately, Barker stayed within the Universal family for his third film, with the project landing at Universal Film Group and Blumhouse Atomic Monster in what was described as a wealthy eight-figure deal.
Parsons and Barker are usually not the one directors cashing in. There have been a myriad of creatives drafting off studios’ fervor for Gen Z-tinged horror talent.
Earlier this month, Warner Bros won a five-studio bidding war with a multi-million-dollar deal for the underlying rights to Siren Head, a viral horror meme that’s behind billions of views across TikTok, YouTube and Roblox. Weapons filmmaker Zach Cregger is attached to write down and produce the project, together with Whalefall‘s Brian Duffield, who could direct. Amazon MGM ended up the victor in a large bidding war for the film rights to the YouTube-released horror franchise The Mandela Catalogue from Alex Kister, who will direct for producers United Artists and Amblin.
If these numbers seem wild, there’s an actual long-term business reasoning behind them. In success, landing a creator early could mean lots of of hundreds of thousands in profits (and even north of $1 billion) for an organization over an individual’s profession. Think what Christopher Nolan’s a long time at Warner Bros. have netted the corporate, or the absurd sum of money South Park creators Trey Stone and Matt Parker have generated for Paramount. In fact, few people will ever reach those heights, but these riches are partially driving the early bets studios are taking.
—Tony Maglio contributed to this story.