It started with a photograph of a bare room lined in yellow wallpaper. That image became a YouTube series, the series became a movie that pulled in nearly $400 million, and now a follow-up is on the way.
According to reports, Backrooms 2 is moving forward with Kane Parsons attached to direct, and an announcement is said to be close. Anyone who watched a teenager’s liminal-space horror shorts pile up views and wondered if A24 could stretch that into a feature already got their answer from the box office: roughly 40 times the production budget, worldwide.
A sequel was always the plan
Parsons more or less spelled that out back in May in an interview with Variety: ” Backrooms has always been planned to be more of a series that goes outside the confines of this film…I’ve got a contract, and I got a hold at my end, and that means I am definitely not done with Backrooms .”
That isn’t a tease. That’s a filmmaker pointing at the signed paperwork.
The fresh part is the schedule. Word is that a formal announcement is right around the corner, and that Backrooms 2 will be the very next film Parsons makes. Not a detour. Not something he returns to after three years elsewhere. Next.
The Osgood Perkins hint finally lines up
In June, industry insider Jeff Sneider reported that Parsons had something new in development alongside Backrooms producer Osgood Perkins. The specifics were vague. It might have been a sequel, it might have been a separate horror project, and nobody on the outside had enough to make the call.
Set that beside what’s being reported now and the picture sharpens considerably. The Perkins team-up and the sequel appear to be one and the same.
From a single photo to a franchise
The origin here really is odd. Parsons came across a picture of a strange, vacant liminal space, became fixated on it, and spun a horror web series out of it on YouTube. The thing went viral. A24 reached out and developed it into an indie horror feature, with Parsons in the director’s chair, and the film landed just as hard as the shorts had.
That’s the detail worth pausing on. The kid behind the fan-favorite version was trusted with the studio version, and it paid off.
The walls still have plenty to give
Parsons has already walked through the ending of Backrooms, the sort of gesture directors typically make when they’re shutting a door behind them. He wasn’t. The lore has hardly been scratched, and the questions it raised remain unanswered.
Development details on the sequel are expected to be revealed shortly, so the wait should be counted in weeks rather than seasons. For now, what exists is a contract, a hold, and a director who keeps repeating that he isn’t done.
Yellow wallpaper and buzzing fluorescents, cued up for a second round.