EXCLUSIVE: There’s nothing better than the positive unexpected at the summer box office, and we could have that in A24/Chernin Entertainment/21 Laps Entertainment/Atomic Monster’s Backrooms which looks to do around $20M when it opens in the post Memorial Day corridor of May 29-31.
The movie, which literally just finished post-production, arrived on tracking this morning.
Should those projections hold, that’s a great result for a movie which cost under $10M (financed by Chernin Entertainment), and one which is opening in the wake of Lucasfilm/Disney’s Star Wars: Mandalorian and Grogus without any PLF or Imax screens.
The sense with Backrooms is that there’s a stickiness around it with the under 25 set who are rabid fans of the Kane Pixels created IP from 2019. The IP launched on 4chan, spread on Reddit and fan wikis, and inspired games on Roblox and Minecraft. The lore built slowly in 2022 when Pixels (who goes by Kate Parsons and directed the movie) then a 16-year-old, transformed the tale into a cinematic universe with found footage via Blender and Unreal Engine to create the YouTube series The Backrooms: Found Footage. That content racked up 190M views. There’s a feeling with Backrooms per box office sources that it has a “by us, for us” sensibility for its fans. The movie stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve and Mark Duplass. Pic’s blurb: After a therapist’s patient disappears into a dimension beyond reality, she must venture into the unknown to save him.
Backrooms arrives in theaters two weekends after Focus Features/Blumhouse/Atomic Monster’s Curry Barker directed romance horror film Obsession which looks to be north of $10M in its domestic start. Though born from a YouTube genre sensation, that film is a different kind of comp when compared to Backrooms. Obsession is fresh IP, while there’s a cult appeal with Backrooms. Earlier this year, Markiplier’s indie made Iron Lung based on the 2022 videogame surprised at the late January B.O. with a $17.8M fan-fueled opening, legging out to $40.8M domestic, and over $50M global off a $3M production cost.
Also arriving on tracking today is Sony’s Nate Bargatze family comedy, The Breadwinner, with an $8M-$10M opening outlook at this point in time. That movie’s highest unaided awareness is with women over 25.