Hollywood spent a decade asking if YouTube fame could translate to the box office.
Lately, it has been getting a very loud answer.
Take “Backrooms,” a psychological horror flick that A24 released in 3,400 theaters in the United States and Canada on Thursday. Directed by Kane Parsons — a 20-year-old first-time filmmaker whose videos have generated 342 million views on YouTube — “Backrooms” is on track to collect at least $60 million by the end of Sunday, according to box office analysts.
To put a result of that size into context, Steven Spielberg’s latest science-fiction extravaganza, “Disclosure Day,” is expected to open to a not-insubstantial $35 million when it arrives in two weeks. A24 spent about $10 million to make “Backrooms,” which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”) and Renate Reinsve (“Sentimental Value”). Universal Pictures spent an estimated $115 million on “Disclosure Day,” which stars Emily Blunt as a meteorologist suddenly overcome by an alien force.
“Backrooms” is part of a growing wave of breakout films from fledgling directors who honed their instincts on YouTube rather than inside the Hollywood ecosystem. Two other creators with no Hollywood track record — Curry Barker and Mark Fischbach — have already turned online followings into surprise box-office hits this year.
“It’s not an anomaly,” Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s film school, said in a phone interview. “It’s the start of a gigantic shift. These are the cinematic insurgents of our era.”
“Obsession,” directed by Mr. Barker, 26, a YouTube creator known for comedy and horror videos, has collected $74 million in North America since its release two weeks ago. A comedy-horror-thriller mash-up about the perils of romantic fixation, “Obsession” cost $750,000 to make and has no boldfaced names in its cast. Analysts say it could collect an astounding $100 million by the end of its run.
Focus Features, the Universal-owned specialty studio behind “Obsession,” also has Mr. Barker’s next movie, which is called “Anything but Ghosts.”
“As YouTube has gotten bigger and bigger as a platform, young filmmakers and young creators have started to trust it more as a place to debut their work,” said Peter Kujawski, the chairman of Focus Features.
Mr. Kujawski noted that Mr. Barker had chosen to debut his first film — a 62-minute slasher, “Milk & Serial” — on YouTube in 2024. In the past, aspiring filmmakers would have hoped to get attention at a festival, as Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez did with their “Blair Witch Project” at Sundance in 1999.
The YouTuber-to-filmmaker boomlet started in January when Mr. Fischbach, 36, self-distributed his horror movie, “Iron Lung,” in 3,015 theaters. To dropped jaws in Hollywood, “Iron Lung,” which cost $3 million to make, collected nearly $18 million over its first three days, easily beating Amazon’s heavily marketed Melania Trump documentary. “Iron Lung,” which also stars Mr. Fischbach, took in $50 million by the end of its run.
Alex DelVecchio, the general manager of Rutgers Cinema, a three-screen theater in New Brunswick, N.J., noted that Mr. Parsons started his YouTube channel (called Kane Pixels) in 2015, when he was only 9, and that Mr. Fischbach had been building his YouTube audience since 2012. (Mr. Fischbach is known as Markiplier on YouTube, where he has over 38 million subscribers.)
“Lots of YouTubers have tried to make the leap to mainstream movies and come up short,” Mr. DelVecchio said. “One thing that’s different with these guys is longevity. At this point, some of them have been making videos for a very long time, and that’s how you develop a loyal audience that will follow you.”
Mr. DelVecchio added: “The college kids buying tickets in huge numbers now became fans when they were really young. It’s like they have a rooting interest in the crossover success of people like Markiplier and Kane Parsons.” (Mr. DelVecchio said he was anticipating sellouts for “Backrooms” over the weekend. “I’ll add shows until sunrise if I need to,” he said.)
These box office victories come with caveats.
“Backrooms,” “Obsession” and “Iron Lung” are all horror films, the genre that has long been the most forgiving for first-time filmmakers, in part because horror is relatively cheap to produce. For some studio executives, that context is a reason for caution: The real shift, they say, will come when horror isn’t the only proof of concept. (To be fair, there have been a few comedy examples over the years, including A24’s “Eighth Grade,” which was Bo Burnham’s directing debut. Mr. Burnham was one of YouTube’s earliest stars.)
“Backrooms” and “Obsession” were also produced by powerful people. The mogul Peter Chernin, the horror maestro James Wan and the A-list filmmaker Shawn Levy have producing credits on Mr. Parsons’s film. Jason Blum, perhaps the most successful horror producer in Hollywood history, was involved with “Obsession.”
Even Mr. Kujawski of Focus Features urged caution.
“There’s a moment happening with YouTube talent, for sure, and it’s really exciting,” he said. “But not everyone who finds success on the internet is going to translate. Curry Barker, for one, is a very, very special storyteller.”
Even so, three high-profile films directed by YouTubers form a pattern Hollywood can’t ignore. Especially since the movie business is still struggling to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. A24, which declined to comment on “Backrooms” before its opening, has already hired Mr. Barker to reboot the 51-year-old “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” franchise for a new generation.
For some people in Hollywood, the YouTuber surge recalls the way a new generation of filmmakers sprang from MTV in the 1990s. Those talents included David Fincher, who started out directing videos for pop stars like Madonna (“Express Yourself”), and Spike Jonze, who gained moviedom’s attention by making inventive videos for performers like the Beastie Boys (“Sabotage”).
“We’re in the midst of a grand toppling of the Hollywood world order,” Mr. Galloway, the film school dean, said. “Young audiences want quick, fresh and new — the opposite of what studios and most established directors are equipped to do.”
