Two feature film newcomers pulled in audiences that made them the talk of the trades this weekend, despite a long-anticipated movie from the enduring Star Wars universe opening around the same time.

Two weeks ago, 26-year-old director Curry Barker made headlines when his horror film Obsession opened to impressive numbers with $17.2 million dollars in its first week and an astounding $24 million in its second week, growth that is seldom seen in today’s movie market. The take from this weekend has been predicted to demonstrate further growth, coming in at around $28.5 million.

Barker became known for his online sketch comedy channel on YouTube called that’s a bad idea. Obsession is technically not his directorial debut as he lensed Milk and Serial, a found-footage film shot for $800 and released directly to YouTube. Obsession is his first theatrical release, however.

And this weekend, another YouTuber, 20-year-old Kane Parsons, saw his first feature film, Backrooms, which he sold to A24, come out and do gangbusters by raking in at least $85 million dollars – a record for A24 films, whose previous record was the much less impressive $25.7 million drawn by Alex Garland’s Civil War in 2024.

Backrooms is taken directly from the universe created by Parsons’ YouTube channel called The Backrooms, which he started 4 years ago. The channel has 22 short videos posted as of now, with each logging at least hundreds of thousands to millions of views.

The Hollywood trade papers have definitely taken notice at this incipient trend. Owen Gleiberman in Variety wrote “The makers of comic-book movies, Star Wars movies and most rom-coms and horror films live inside the box. But not the creators of Backrooms and Obsession, two horror movies that take you places you’ve never been. Evidently, a lot of people want to go there…if Hollywood really wants to take a lesson from the shocking success of these two movies, the message should be much larger than ‘Hip filmmakers with devoted web followings sell!'”

Glieberman concluded his article by saying, “mostly we need a return to making the kinds of movies that people seek out because they want to be surprised. Backrooms and Obsession are artful enough to prove that mainstream audiences actually crave something artful. Something out of the box. For a moment and maybe more, these films should unite everyone in saying: Fuck the box.”

Deadline quoted Warner Bros. Motion Picture Co-Chair Michael De Luca, speaking at a panel on Saturday, as saying of Barker and Parsons, “They hone their craft online. Kane worked on Backrooms for five years,” said De Luca, “These filmmakers are in a dialogue with their audience from the word ‘Go’. Their subscribers have direct input in each iteration of these things.”

De Luca said that unlike the directors who wait to hear focus groups tear their movies apart, “they’re making movies for their audience who have been subscribing to their channels for years. That’s been the proving ground. So by the time the movies come out, they’re calibrated to please that audience.”

Barker’s next big project is a remake though – he’s set to helm a reboot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre for A24, and he’s editing his movie Anything But Ghosts, for which filming has been completed. According to IndieWire, Barker has an eight-figure offer on his next film after Chainsaw.

Parsons, who was still in high school when he began directing his first feature, hasn’t booked his second project but told People magazine that he wasn’t done with the world of Backrooms yet.