A photo of an empty room with yellow wallpaper turned into a YouTube series, then into a movie that made almost $400 million. Now it’s getting a sequel.
Reports say Backrooms 2 is in the works with Kane Parsons signed on to direct, and that an announcement is coming soon. For anyone who watched a teenager’s liminal-space horror shorts rack up views and wondered whether A24 could turn that into a feature, the answer already arrived at the box office. About 40 times its production budget, worldwide.
The sequel was never really a question
Parsons said as much in May, talking to Variety: ” Backrooms has always been planned to be more of a series that goes outside the confines of this film…I’ve got a contract, and I got a hold at my end, and that means I am definitely not done with Backrooms .”
That’s not a tease. That’s a director telling you the paperwork exists.
What’s new is the timing. The word is that an official announcement is imminent, and that Backrooms 2 will be Parsons’ next movie. Not a side project. Not something he circles back to in three years. Next.
The Osgood Perkins clue makes sense now
Back in June, industry insider Jeff Sneider said Parsons was developing something new with Backrooms producer Osgood Perkins. Details were thin. It could have been a sequel, it could have been an unrelated horror project, and nobody watching from the outside had enough to call it.
Put that next to the current reporting and the shape of it gets clearer. The Perkins collaboration and the sequel look like the same thing.
How a still image became a franchise
The origin story is genuinely strange. Parsons saw a picture of an odd, empty liminal space, got fixated, and built a horror web series around it on YouTube. It went viral. A24 came calling and turned it into an indie horror film with Parsons himself directing, and the movie hit as hard as the shorts did.
That’s the part worth sitting with. The guy who made the fan-favorite version got handed the studio version, and it worked.
There’s plenty left in the walls
Parsons has already explained the ending of Backrooms, which is the kind of thing directors usually do when they’re closing a door. He wasn’t. The lore has barely been touched and the open questions are still open.
Development plans for the sequel are supposed to be announced soon, which means the waiting period is measured in weeks, not seasons. Until then, all anyone has is a contract, a hold, and a director who keeps saying he isn’t finished.
Yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lighting, coming back for round two.
