After months of being an Internet sensation, Backrooms is coming to streaming. HBO Max announced that the film based on the viral 4chan thread is coming to the platform late next month, making it the latest of this year’s most popular horror films to be available at home.
Having hit digital in July, the film made nearly $400 million at the global box office, making it the biggest opening ever for production company A24. Backrooms stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, and comes from twenty-something YouTube sensation Kane Parsons, who directed the Backrooms short films that spawned in 2022 from the original 4chan creepypasta thread. (Not a sentence I ever thought I’d write, but here we are.) The film’s synopsis is as follows:
After a therapist's patient goes missing into a dimension beyond reality, she has to enter the unknown to save him.
Backrooms is directed by Parson from a script by Will Soodik, with Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, Michael Clear, and James Wan serving as producers. It joins a growing list of other horror films A24 is releasing this year, including Mother Mary, The Death of Robin Hood, Undertone, Onslaught, and Primetime.
Its streaming premiere 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.
Backrooms hits HBO Max on September 25.
