Will young people ever come back to the movies? That question has shadowed Hollywood since the Covid-19 pandemic, with skeptics insisting that theaters have become relics for a generation raised on streaming.
The answer came, resoundingly, over the weekend.
“Backrooms,” a psychological horror flick from a 20-year-old YouTube creator turned filmmaker, collected an astounding $82 million in North America from Thursday through Sunday — with roughly 86 percent of the audience under the age of 35, according to PostTrak, a film industry research service. (About 44 percent was under 21.) “Backrooms” cost A24 and Chernin Entertainment about $10 million to make, not including marketing; it was marketed mostly with an inexpensive online campaign.
“Backrooms” was No. 1, making its director, Kane Parsons, the youngest filmmaker in Hollywood history to achieve that ranking, according to A24. The previous record-holder, Josh Trank, was 27 when his “Chronicle” topped the box office in 2012.
Analysts had predicted last week that “Backrooms” would collect $60 million in North America over the weekend. Overseas, “Backrooms” took in an additional $36.5 million.
The colossal turnout for “Backrooms” — it was the biggest debut for an A24 film in the studio’s 14-year history, by a factor of three — adds to evidence that teenagers and young adults will gladly go to theaters for the right offering. “Obsession,” a comedy-horror-thriller mash-up about the perils of romantic fixation by Focus Features, has sold about $105 million in tickets since its May 15 release. About 78 percent of the opening-weekend audience for “Obsession” was under the age of 35, according to PostTrak.
Notably, “Obsession” also came from a first-time filmmaker, Curry Barker, who honed his instincts on YouTube rather than inside the Hollywood ecosystem. “Obsession” cost $750,000 to make.
Other recent hits powered by Gen Z and younger millennials have included “Iron Lung,” “Scream 7,” “A Minecraft Movie” and “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle.”
“Since Covid, there’s been this lethargic feeling around theatrical — is it relevant anymore, and is it going to survive?” Jason Blum, whose production company, Blumhouse-Atomic Monster, had a hand in both “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” said at a conference on Saturday. He added, “To me, there’s almost this feeling of the ’70s, of this new generation of young people who are making edgy movies that are connecting in theaters in a crazy way.”
In the 1960s, Hollywood tried to compete with a booming new medium — television — by rolling out bloated spectacles like “Cleopatra,” “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and “Paint Your Wagon.” (The equivalent today would be the manner in which studios, panicked by the skyrocketing popularity of Netflix, TikTok and Fortnite, have churned out big-budget sequels with marathon run times.)
Young audiences in the ’60s were unmoved. But a new generation of filmmakers revived Hollywood with pictures that spoke more directly to the counterculture and its anxieties. Examples include “Easy Rider” (1969), “Mean Streets” (1973) and “American Graffiti” (1973).
No studio has pushed harder to court young audiences by fostering young directors — movies for us, by us — than A24, which was founded in 2012 in New York. A24 started to court Mr. Parsons three years ago, when he was 17, after noticing how his horror-based YouTube videos were resonating among teenagers.
Other young directing talents that A24 has discovered or greatly amplified include Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”), Ari Aster (“Hereditary”), Benny and Josh Safdie (“Good Time”), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), Alex Garland (“Ex Machina”), Sean Baker (“The Florida Project”) and Celine Song (“Past Lives”).
More than 50 percent of “Backrooms” ticket buyers cited A24 as a main reason for going out to see it, according to PostTrak. The movie, which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, received strong reviews. The plot involves a furniture store owner who discovers a portal into a strange, labyrinthine realm and disappears into it.
For the weekend in North America, “Obsession” was No. 2. “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” (Disney) fell off sharply from its opening weekend, landing in a disappointing third place, with about $25 million in ticket sales, for a new domestic total of roughly $137.4 million, according to Comscore, a data firm.
Brooks Barnes is the chief Hollywood correspondent for The Times. He has reported on the entertainment industry for 25 years.
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