There's expected to be a very active stream of horror films being released from YouTube this weekend.<\/p>\n
Taking the top spot at the box office is Backrooms, a feature-length adaptation of Kain Parsons' YouTube series featuring eerie footage of a mysterious office space (taken from a 4chan thread) that defies the laws of physics.<\/p>\n
Parsons's "Behind the Scenes" grossed $38 million on Friday and is expected to gross between $80 million and $90 million at the U.S. box office this weekend. This marks the biggest opening weekend for independent studio A24, surpassing the previous record held by "Civil War," which grossed $25.7 million in its opening weekend. <\/p>\n
Second-placed "Obsession" is arguably posting even more impressive results. True, it only took in $8 million on Friday, with a projected weekend gross of $28.5 million. However, the film (about romantic desire turned nightmare) has already earned more money in its second weekend than its first, and is now expected to grow by another 19 percent in its third weekend.<\/p>\n
By comparison, most films released in wide release typically see their box office take drop by 50-70 percent in their second weekend; last year's The Sinners was considered an unusually word-of-mouth success, as its box office take dropped less than 5 percent. With the exception of Christmas releases (which, thanks to the holidays, have greater resilience), weekend-to-weekend box office growth is unheard of: according to The Hollywood Reporter, Obsession is the first film since 1982 to show box office growth in both its second and third weeks.<\/p>\n
Like "Behind the Scenes," "Obsession" is a horror film directed by a director who first gained fame on YouTube: Curry Barker, who in 2024 released the hour-long found-footage horror film "Milk and the Serial Killings" on YouTube. Barker has already filmed his next movie and is set to direct a new remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.".<\/p>\n
These two films follow the unexpected success of Iron Lungs, a video game adaptation released earlier this year. Iron Lungs was directed by Mark Fischbach, better known by his YouTube handle Markiplier. The film grossed nearly $41 million at the US box office. <\/p>\n
In a New York Times article about the recent "YouTube-to-filmmaking boom," Rutgers Cinema CEO Mark Delvecchio noted that "many YouTubers have tried to make the transition to mainstream film and failed." What distinguishes Parsons, Barker, and Fischbach? Delvecchio said that despite their young ages (Parsons is 20, Barker is 26), they all possess "longevity.".<\/p>\n
\u00ab"Some of them have been making videos for a very long time now, and that's how you build a loyal audience that will follow you," he added.<\/p>\n
By the way, although I haven't seen Behind the Scenes yet (fingers crossed that I will tomorrow), I I saw<\/em> \u00ab"Obsession." So I can confirm that it didn't disappoint me at all\u2014I spent most of the second half covering my eyes with my fingers, and I may have even screamed a few times.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This weekend, a very active stream of horror films is expected to hit YouTube. Taking the top spot is "Backrooms," a feature-length adaptation of a series of videos\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kinoindustriya","hvn-theme-has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}