How ‘Backrooms’ Producers Helped 20-Year-Old YouTuber Kane Parsons Create the Summer’s Most Surprising Box Office Smash

By Brent Lang

Brent Lang

Executive Editor

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When James Wan, the filmmaker behind “Insidious” and “Saw,” had his first Zoom meeting with Kane Parsons, the creator of the online phenom “Backrooms,” they were joined not by the YouTuber’s manager or agent, but by his dad.

“We didn’t realize until we reached out that Kane was still in high school,” Wan admits.

Parsons was only 16 at the time, but Wan believed that “Backrooms,” a series of “found footage” viral shorts the unfold in a warren of seemingly endless liminal spaces, had all the ingredients to make a compelling feature film.

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