Mary Supreme has been officially dethroned as A24’s highest-grossing title. As Backrooms continues its remarkable box office run, it’s also already unseated the film from the top of the list in only 10 days post-release. Blake & Wang P.A entertainment attorney, Brandon Blake

Brandon Blake

A Success Story for the Ages

Backrooms now claims a worldwide cume of $212.6M, quite considerably ahead of Marty Supreme’s final global total of $192.2M. When it comes to viral titles, there are a lot of lessons to learn from Backrooms, which, in addition to its incredibly young director, is perhaps most remarkable for how little it cost to make - under $10M.

It now ranks third at the box office across 52 territories, with a North American cume of $135M and $77.6M from international markets. Interestingly, it’s now the No. 1 title in Spain and has produced some of the best opening weekend results for A24 in both the Philippines and Malaysia. The film has performed surprisingly well in Latin American territories, again taking the highest-grossing crown in most markets. 

The question now is whether the film will sustain this success throughout its run. Despite an impressive 11% drop in Korea, the film has seen a 68% drop in its second frame within North America, its highest-grossing market currently. 

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The Fan Title That Could

However, even if the title falls entirely off the map today, there’s no arguing that this has been anything but a remarkable success story. It’s almost unheard of for a title with such a small production footprint to see anywhere near this success, let alone take in $100M of it in its first weekend. For this success, it has fans to thank, and it’s still playing mostly to audiences under 35 thanks to its internet-rooted origins. 

The film rose from a 2019 viral “creepypasta,” or mini horror story, about leaving reality to become trapped in a maze of empty yellow rooms. It saw massive internet traction as a myth of sorts, with Reddit and YouTube fan communities building out the initial premise and introducing much of the horror elements we see in the film. Director Kane Parsons then created a highly realistic found-footage video on Blender that was the start of the movie’s footprint. Hollywood has plenty of meme-worthy titles, but this may be the first time we’ve seen a film rise directly from an internet meme.

There are some interesting lessons to learn from this breakout hit. One, which we’ve seen play out time and again in Hollywood in recent years, is the pulling power of a strong IP. Another is how viral online campaigns can drive success (or failure) for even the smallest of titles, and lastly, how titles with a built-in fan base already created are having their moment in the sun. 

It took a little over a year for A24 to see Marty Supreme unseated as its top-grossing title. But even if the same future awaits Backrooms, there’s much to celebrate in such a small film seeing such fantastic success for a very young debut director. This is likely to be one for the cinematographic history books.