Christopher Nolan does not typically weigh in on box office trends. When he does, it is worth noting.
In a July 10 interview with The Telegraph, conducted ahead of the July 17 release of his epic The Odyssey, Nolan singled out two low-budget horror films as evidence of something the industry is still struggling to articulate. "I have never seen a more rapid wholesale dismissal of a supposedly foundational jump in technology in my lifetime," he said, referring to young audiences rejecting AI content in cinema.
The two films he cited are Obsession, directed by Curry Barker and distributed by Focus Features, and Backrooms, directed by Kane Parsons and released by A24. Obsession was made for $750,000 and acquired by Focus Features at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival for $15 million. It has since crossed $400 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing festival acquisition in history and Focus Features' top-grossing release ever. Backrooms, which opened May 29, has surpassed $350 million globally, making it A24's highest-grossing film to date.
"Their judgment of AI slop has been immediate and harsh," Nolan told The Telegraph. "They see it for what it is very quickly." He added that young audiences identify it so readily "because it grew out of an online world they know really well." In filmmaking, he said, AI's arrival is "hitting at exactly the wrong time," as "we are seeing a renewed interest in more tactile, more real forms of storytelling."
Neither film arrived with franchise scaffolding or recognizable IP. Both are slow, demanding, and quietly strange. "Those films are so mysterious and ruminative," Nolan said. "And yet young people can't get enough of them." The numbers suggest the appetite for authentic filmmaking was never in question. What is changing is who gets to make it.
