Backrooms 2 Reportedly Moving Forward With Kane Parsons Returning to Direct
If there was ever a horror sequel that seemed inevitable in 2026, Backrooms 2 was probably near the top of the list. Following the extraordinary theatrical success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, Dread Central is exclusively reporting that Parsons has now officially signed on to direct a second film for A24, with the site saying an official announcement is expected imminently. More importantly, according to its sources, the sequel will be Parsons’ next movie, meaning audiences may not have to wait while the young filmmaker completes another feature before disappearing into those impossible corridors again.
It represents another remarkable development in a story that began with a teenager experimenting with Blender and uploading videos to YouTube. Parsons was only 16 when he released The Backrooms (Found Footage) in January 2022, building his own interpretation of an internet phenomenon that had existed before he became involved. His nine-minute film subsequently attracted tens of millions of views and developed into an interconnected series of videos involving the mysterious Async Research Institute. Parsons did not invent the original Backrooms concept, but his distinctive found-footage interpretation became one of its most influential versions and ultimately provided the foundation for A24’s feature film. Dread Central reports that executive producer Chris White first discovered Parsons’ work after his teenage son showed him the video, eventually helping bring Parsons and the project to James Wan and Michael Clear at Atomic Monster.
From a 2019 Internet Mystery to an A24 Blockbuster
The history of the Backrooms itself is almost as strange as Parsons’ rise. The concept became an internet phenomenon in 2019 after an image of an unsettling yellow interior was posted alongside text describing what could happen if someone accidentally “noclipped” out of reality. The idea was essentially an endless maze of monotonous rooms, yellow wallpaper, fluorescent lighting and damp-looking carpet, a place recognisable enough to feel mundane but empty and distorted enough to become deeply uncomfortable. The image and accompanying mythology spread across the internet, with different creators gradually adding creatures, locations and increasingly complicated lore.
Years later, the location shown in the famous original photograph was identified as part of a former furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Parsons himself has discussed the history of the image and how the Backrooms circulated as a meme before he developed his own interpretation. He wasn’t trying to establish a definitive version of the mythology. Instead, his interest in liminal-space imagery led him to build digital environments that captured the feeling he associated with the concept.
What made Parsons’ videos particularly interesting was the direction in which he took that simple idea. Rather than merely sending characters into endless yellow rooms and having monsters chase them, he gradually introduced Async, a research organisation attempting to understand and exploit the phenomenon. The videos mixed found footage, analogue horror, scientific experimentation and increasingly elaborate world-building. Parsons has described his version as supernatural but approached with the sensibilities of hard science fiction, giving the mystery a very different flavour from many of the other Backrooms interpretations that appeared online.
Hollywood eventually noticed. The feature was developed with A24, Chernin Entertainment, Atomic Monster and 21 Laps, with Parsons making the extraordinary jump from creating the YouTube series as a teenager to directing a major theatrical film. Will Soodik wrote the screenplay, while Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve took the leading roles. A24’s official synopsis was deliberately simple: “A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom.”
The Backrooms Movie Became Enormous
Parsons also resisted simply reproducing his YouTube videos at feature length. He explained in an A24 conversation with producer James Wan that the shorts were deliberately fragmented and vignette-driven, allowing viewers to piece together their story across repeated viewings. A theatrical movie needed to work differently. The intention was to make something accessible to people who had never watched a second of his YouTube material while retaining connections to the mythology his existing audience had spent years following.
That meant using characters as a route into the nightmare rather than expecting cinemagoers to arrive knowing what Async was or understanding years of internet lore. It also meant considerably increasing the physical scale. Parsons revealed that around 30,000 square feet of sets were constructed on a soundstage for the film, while his extensive experience with Blender carried directly into the production process. The transition from homemade internet horror to a feature intended for enormous cinema screens was considerable, but Parsons remained deeply involved in shaping its environments and visual effects.
Then something happened that made a sequel considerably more than wishful thinking: Backrooms became a gigantic commercial hit.
The film opened in North America at the end of May and massively exceeded early expectations. Variety reported that it passed $100 million domestically after only six days, overtaking Marty Supreme to become A24’s biggest film at the North American box office. A few days later, Backrooms became the first A24 release ever to pass $200 million worldwide, reaching $212 million globally after only ten days in cinemas.
For perspective, this was a feature directed by a filmmaker whose path into Hollywood began with a nine-minute YouTube video made when he was 16. Whatever anyone thought of the finished movie, the commercial response demonstrated that the online audience surrounding the Backrooms could translate into people actually buying cinema tickets. It also made the prospect of A24 walking away after one movie extremely unlikely.
Parsons Always Saw Backrooms as Something Bigger
Backrooms 2 news isn’t simply the inevitable reaction to unexpectedly large box-office numbers. Parsons had already indicated that his feature was intended as part of something larger. Before the first film opened, he told Variety that Backrooms had been conceived as a series extending beyond the boundaries of one movie, while also revealing that he was contractually committed to further Backrooms projects and had specific ideas in development. Dread Central now reports that the next of those projects is indeed Backrooms 2.
That should be particularly interesting for anyone who followed Parsons before the feature existed. His YouTube mythology has always been much larger than the immediately recognisable yellow corridors. Async’s experiments, its attempts to access and investigate the alternate space, the strange chronology of the videos and the suggestion that human interference may be making things considerably worse provided Parsons with years of material to explore. The feature brought Async directly into its story, but it didn’t exhaust everything Parsons had created.
Parsons has subsequently suggested that the larger story is still some distance from revealing everything. Discussing his approach to storytelling earlier this year, he said there was still considerably further to travel and that the real heart of the narrative remained ahead. That becomes much more significant now that another feature is apparently moving ahead with him directing.
There is currently no confirmed plot, cast or release date for Backrooms 2, and those gaps are important. Dread Central’s report establishes Parsons’ involvement according to its sources, but until A24 makes its announcement, anything more specific about where the sequel will go would be speculation. We also don’t yet know whether Ejiofor or Reinsve will return, how directly the new film will continue the events of the first, or which elements of Parsons’ online mythology might be brought into the sequel.
What we do know is that Parsons had another original film in development with Longlegs director Osgood Perkins, who was also involved behind the scenes on Backrooms. Dread Central had previously reported that Perkins helped Parsons develop the first feature screenplay and acted as a mentor during his transition into feature filmmaking. The question was therefore whether Parsons would make that original project before returning to the franchise that made his name. According to Dread Central’s latest report, we now have the answer: Backrooms 2 comes first.
The speed of the whole journey remains astonishing. In 2022, Parsons was a 16-year-old uploading an experimental horror film to YouTube. Four years later, he had directed Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve in an A24 feature that became the studio’s first $200 million worldwide release. Now, according to Dread Central, he is preparing to do it again.
There are still an awful lot of rooms left to explore in Backrooms 2.
