Kane Parsons spent the weekend in Zurich with some of the industry's most powerful executives. The 21-year-old director of Backrooms was not interested in talking about horror.
Speaking at the Zurich Film Festival Summit on Saturday, Parsons pushed back on the genre classification that has followed his A24 debut since its May 2026 release. "I didn't direct like a horror film," he said. "I don't view it as a horror project." He attributed the label to marketing convenience, calling it "the path of least resistance" from a commercial standpoint. "I'm going to try to stay as oblivious to those labels as possible," he added.
Backrooms grossed approximately $400 million worldwide, according to The Wrap, making it A24's largest theatrical release in the studio's history. Parsons adapted the film from his own viral found-footage web series, which he began publishing at age 16 under the YouTube channel Kane Pixels. He was 20 when the film opened to the number one spot domestically and globally.
The panel also featured Academy CEO Bill Kramer, Mattel Studios president Robbie Brenner, and Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker. Trade reports of a Backrooms sequel were met with a flat denial. "That seems more like a hallucinated thing," Parsons said.
With greater creative control secured for future projects, Parsons said he intends to make genre structures "a little less forceful." What that looks like in practice remains unannounced.
