Following the gargantuan box office success of his feature debut, Kane Parsons may have the world at his feet but he doesn't want to stray too far from the Backrooms, with the 21-year-old filmmaker teasing his “dream scenario” as to how the liminal nightmare will continue.
Directed by Parsons from a script by Will Soodik, with Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, Michael Clear, and James Wan serving as producers, the FANGORIA Chainsaw Award-nominated Backrooms made nearly $400 million at the global box office, making it the biggest opening ever for production company A24.
Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, the film served as a full length feature based on Parsons' Backrooms shorts that spawned in 2022 from the original 4chan creepypasta thread. In Backrooms, after a therapist's patient goes missing into a dimension beyond reality, she has to enter the unknown to save him.
Speaking in a new interview with Deadline, Parsons revealed that, ideally, he'd like to continue exploring the Backrooms on the small screen rather than the big:
“I’ve said since the very beginning that the dream scenario would be a limited series for Backrooms to get to the main ending. […] I can’t say anything but there’s been a very set arc to the whole thing from the beginning, and I just feel absurdly excited at the idea of actually being able to follow through on all of it.”
Now, spoilers, but given how Parsons' Backrooms ended, it's unlikely that a series would follow either Ejiofor or Reinsve's characters. One idea for a series that is a purely personal pipe dream as a long time Peachfuzz stan could see The Creep Tapes' Mark Duplass, who played scientist and researcher Phil, take the reigns of the show as Async's dive into the bizarre Backrooms realm continues.
Either way, a Backrooms series of shorter episodes would surely see the same level of success as its feature film predecessor, while an episodic format would return the story to its web series roots.
Backrooms' streaming premiere earlier this summer follows the success of an extended cut that was released in theaters featuring sixteen additional minutes of footage, which is available to watch now for free on YouTube.
It also sparked a renewed interest in adapting viral Internet stories for film, with projects based on Jeff the Killer, Cartoon Cat, and The Mandela Catalogue all currently in development.
Stay tuned for more developments on a Backrooms series as we get 'em.
