Curry Barker had done everything right. As a horror-movie obsessive growing up in Alabama, he founded a film club at his high school, acted in plays and studied up on camera lenses. At 18, he moved to Los Angeles to study acting. By the time he graduated, Barker was working at a coffee shop, devoting his free time to directing short films. He submitted one of them, “The Chair,” to a few nearby film festivals in 2022.
All were important experiences for Barker. But the 26-year-old’s career took off when he put those shorts on his sketch comedy YouTube channel, That’s a Bad Idea, where they soon went viral.
“The amount of exposure that you can get on YouTube will really surpass any exposure that you’ll get from local film festivals,” Barker told The Washington Post. “Unless you’re getting into the biggest festivals … you might as well use YouTube as a platform. Why not?”
Now, Barker has a certified hit on his hands. Because of intense word-of-mouth, his new movie “Obsession” is the rare film to have a stronger second weekend at the box office — and the latest successful horror movie to come from someone who started on YouTube. According to several film producers and studio executives, the online video platform is where aspiring filmmakers can hone their craft and build an audience.
“That’s where the work is happening,” said Kori Adelson, a producer who brought Kane Parsons’s YouTube series “Backrooms” to A24 to adapt into a feature film, out now and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. “It’s what Sundance used to be in the ’90s. It’s a breeding ground for discovery.”
YouTube is full of users demonstrating their visual and storytelling know-how, making it fertile ground for independent studios. Kiska Higgs, the president of production and acquisitions at Focus Features, believes that by working with digital natives, studios are bringing unexpected references — from video games to the internet-born horror tales known as creepypastas — to the silver screen.
“A lot of these younger filmmakers, whether they’re content creators or not, operate without dogma,” Higgs said. “Their references are not … the hallowed references from generations before.”
Major independent studios, such as A24, Neon and Focus, are willing to take a chance on these YouTubers — predominantly young men, so far — for various reasons, ranging from the strength of their filmmaking to their ability to draw viewers while working with minuscule budgets.
“It of course helps the studio have more confidence green-lighting something when they know that there’s a built-in audience,” Adelson said. But these studios aren’t going to take a chance on anyone with a YouTube account, she added, noting that Parsons proved his world-building skills with the “Backrooms” shorts. “If he wasn’t him, the movie wouldn’t be the movie.”
Kane Parsons, 20
YouTube claim to fame: The web-series “Backrooms,” which adapted the creepypasta into several eerie short films.
Subscriber count: 3.1 million
Big-screen breakout: “Backrooms,” which follows a therapist’s journey through an unworldly portal to search for a missing patient, has been described by the Guardian as steadily raising “its game towards the big finish with jump scares, squirm scares and tiny shiver scares.” Its opening-weekend box-office estimate is $85 to $90 million, all on a $10 million budget.
Making the jump: Not long after Parsons started uploading episodes of “Backrooms” in 2022, producers and other Hollywood figures got in touch. Initially skeptical, Parsons eventually spoke with producer Chris Ferguson, who works at the “Longlegs” production company Oddfellows and reassured Parsons about the potential of a “Backrooms” film. By January 2023, “Backrooms” was announced as a co-production between A24, Chernin Entertainment, 21 Laps Entertainment and James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster.
Toughest lesson: At first, Parsons had trouble adjusting to the size of the “Backrooms” production. “I had nerves in the back of my brain questioning, ‘Am I doing this right?’ or ‘Are people looking at me weird because of my age?’ or ‘Am I fundamentally missing something about this?’” Parsons told the Los Angeles Times. “It took a few days to clarify that this is going how it’s supposed to go. I’m getting what I want so what do I have to be stressed about?”
Next project: While Parsons hasn’t announced any upcoming projects, “I think he has a lot of stories to tell still in the Backrooms but what he wants to say is not Backrooms-exclusive,” said Adelson, comparing Parsons’s versatility and command of tone to David Lynch. “He’s trying to express this lack of connectedness of his generation, people feeling lonely and isolated.”
Curry Barker, 26
YouTube claim to fame: The comedy sketch channel That’s a Bad Idea.
Subscriber count: 1.17 million
Big-screen breakout: “Obsession” follows Bear (Michael Johnston), a young music store worker who buys a novelty toy that grants any wish. He asks it to make his friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) fall in love with him, before disturbances and chaos ensue. Purchased for more than $14 million by Focus Features after it premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, “Obsession” has made more than $60 million after two weekends in over 2,500 theaters — a remarkable return on a film that reportedly cost less than $1 million to produce.
Making the jump: After Barker uploaded “The Chair,” a horror short film to YouTube, he heard from James Harris, a producer at Tea Shop Productions, who wanted to adapt it into a feature-length film. Over coffee, Barker pitched the idea for his new film, “Obsession,” and Harris agreed to help him find financing. It didn’t hurt that Barker’s found-footage feature “Milk & Serial” had become a viral sensation after he uploaded it to the That’s a Bad Idea channel.
Toughest lesson: Barker hadn’t anticipated the tight schedules and lengthy call sheets that come with leading a larger film set. When working on That’s a Bad Idea videos for YouTube alongside his partner Cooper Tomlinson, who plays a critical role in “Obsession,” Barker was able to try out as many camera setups as he wanted.
“I wasn’t really used to the amount of hula hoops that you have to jump through just to get a single shot of anything,” Barker said, adding later that a larger budget can have its own drawbacks: “A simple driving scene that I would have done on ‘Obsession’ or on my short films now requires a police escort and being on a trailer and having insurance on a certain road — all this stuff you never have to think about.”
Has it been lucrative? Since the September premiere of “Obsession,” Barker has become one of horror’s most in-demand filmmakers. The budgets for his films have steadily increased and his financial situation is more stable. But he isn’t living lavishly yet.
“I know so many people kind of think, ‘Oh my God, you must be a millionaire now and blah, blah,’” Barker said. “I’m not. I live in my apartment, I have a relatively normal life. We’ll see what happens in the future, but, right now, I’m comfortable. It’s not some crazy, flashy life.”
Next project: Barker is currently editing his next film, “Anything but Ghosts,” which stars Aaron Paul and follows a pair of ghost hunters who actually don’t believe in ghosts. “I’m about 10 minutes into the cut,” Barker said. He’s also helming a reboot of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” according to a source at A24 involved with creative decisions, and has teased an “Obsession” spin-off in interviews.
Chris Stuckmann, 38
YouTube claim to fame: Movie explainers and reviews of new releases.
Subscriber count: 2.02 million
Big-screen breakout: Released in the United States in October, “Shelby Oaks” follows the disappearance of paranormal investigator and YouTuber Riley Brennan, and the ensuing search by her sister. “Shelby” mixes formats, including footage from Riley’s fictional YouTube channel Paranormal Paranoids; a documentary crew following Riley’s sister Mia; footage found on a digital videotape; and traditional narrative horror filmmaking. The film grossed a little over $8 million worldwide, starting with just $1.3 million pledged on Kickstarter, and reportedly some additional funding from Neon for reshoots.
Making the jump: Stuckmann began attending genre-focused film festivals like Fantastic Fest in Austin as a member of the press. He was looking to build connections and find financing for his work, but if all else failed he thought, “maybe I’ll make some new friends and see some cool movies.” Eventually the director got to talking with producer Aaron Koontz of Paper Street Pictures. ”[He] asked me if there was anything I was working on, and I said, ‘Yeah, I got a few things,’” Stuckmann said. He pitched a number of his unmade ideas to Koontz, who latched onto “Shelby Oaks.”
Stuckmann and Koontz used the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to raise enough money to start filming. Mike Flanagan (“Doctor Sleep”) signed on as an executive producer to support the project, and Neon agreed to distribute the film.
Toughest lesson: “Man, there’s so many,” Stuckmann said. What he wasn’t fully prepared for was the amount of time he’d be forced spend away from his wife and young children. “That’s tough on me. I really love my kids. And not seeing them for that long at the age they are … they’re still kind of confused about ‘where did daddy go?’”
Has it been lucrative? Stuckmann maintains his YouTube channel as a way to make ends meet and support his family. “We’re in a rough patch right now for indie filmmakers. It’s extremely difficult … All of my friends are really struggling financially and everybody that I know is doing some side thing.”
Next project: Stuckmann’s next feature hasn’t been announced, but he said he’s working on something: “I can’t describe it or really say what it is. But I have a thing that I’ve written. I’ll say it’s a genre movie and I’m really, really hoping to shoot it as soon as possible.”
Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach, 36
YouTube claim to fame: Video game watch-alongs, “Try Not To Laugh” challenges and animations.
Subscriber count: 38.6 million
Big-screen breakout: “Iron Lung” takes place in a postapocalyptic world after an event known as “the Quiet Rapture.” In addition to financing, co-writing and directing the film, Fischbach stars as Simon, a convict on a distant moon who uses a submarine known as an Iron Lung to explore an ocean of blood.
Making the jump: One of the most popular YouTube creators working today, Fischbach self-financed, produced and distributed his feature debut “Iron Lung” earlier this year. The film is an adaptation of a 2022 indie video game of the same name. Speaking on the podcast “Lemonade Stand,” Fischbach said he reached out directly to the game’s creator, David Szymanski, and asked for permission to make a feature. From there, Fischbach used much of the crew he had worked with on previous narrative projects like “In Space with Markiplier,” which was released through YouTube Originals.
Toughest lesson: You can’t just put your movie on YouTube, at least not without an already established deal between a studio and the website. After the theatrical success of “Iron Lung,” the film was finally made available to stream exclusively on YouTube Movies on May 29. That’s nearly four months after the film played in theaters, a much longer gap than is typical of modern release schedules. The director expressed frustration in the lengthy pause in a recent video posted to his YouTube channel.
Has it been lucrative? Prior to production, Fischbach decided that he would be okay with not making his money back on the film. Speaking on “Lemonade Stand,” he said, “You cannot put everything on the line and be like, ‘I’m going to die if I don’t get my money back.’” Because he financed his own movie for $4 million, Fischbach stands to retain a large chunk of the film’s $50 million box office revenue.
Next project: Fischbach has yet to announce his next feature project, although he is hesitant to dive back into the world of video game adaptation. “If the next one isn’t an original idea, then I am hindering myself as an artist,” Fischbach told “Lemonade Stand.” “You have to do things that kind of scare you because that’s how you know you are being challenged enough to grow.”
Additional research by Beck Snyder
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