A24 is turning Kane Parsons’ Backrooms YouTube series into a feature film, with Parsons himself directing and Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass and Lukita Maxwell starring. Here is every confirmed fact, every number still waiting on A24, and the smartest way to fill the gap while you wait.
The key facts in one table
You searched for a release date, a runtime and a rating. The honest answer is that A24 has locked some of those down and kept others close to its chest. This table separates what is confirmed from what is still a projection.
| Detail | Status |
|---|---|
| Title | Backrooms |
| Studio / distributor | A24 |
| Director | Kane Parsons (Kane Pixels) |
| Screenplay | Roberto Patino (Westworld, DMZ) |
| Production companies | Atomic Monster, 21 Laps Entertainment, Chernin Entertainment |
| Key producers | James Wan, Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping |
| Lead cast | Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Lukita Maxwell |
| Release window | 2026, theatrical first |
| Exact release date | Not yet announced by A24 |
| Runtime | Not yet announced |
| MPA rating | Not yet rated |
| Budget | Not disclosed (A24 rarely publishes budgets) |
| Box office | Nothing yet, the film is unreleased |
| Streaming home | Expected on Max after theatrical and digital windows |
If you see a site listing a specific day, a 97-minute runtime or an R rating as fact right now, treat it with suspicion. Those numbers come from placeholder entries on listing sites, not from A24.
When does the Backrooms movie come out?
A24 is targeting 2026 for the Backrooms movie, and the studio has treated it as a theatrical release from the first announcement. That was always the plan. When the project was revealed in February 2023, the pitch was a proper big-screen feature, not a streaming original, which matters for a story built on scale and silence.
You should expect A24 to announce the precise date alongside a first teaser, which is the studio’s habit. Talk to Me (2023) and Heretic (2024) both got their dates nailed down when marketing started in earnest, a few months before release. Backrooms will likely follow the same playbook, so the moment a trailer drops, the date will be attached to it.
Why has it taken this long? Parsons was 16 when he uploaded the first Backrooms video in January 2022. A24 signed him a year later, the script went through Roberto Patino, casting came together in 2025, and a first-time feature director with a heavily effects-driven film does not rush post-production. For a project that lives and dies on how convincing its empty hallways look, that slow pace is a good sign rather than a worrying one.
Backrooms movie runtime and rating
Neither number is official yet. Both are worth thinking about, though, because they tell you what kind of film this is going to be.
A24 horror rarely sprawls. Hereditary (2018) runs 127 minutes and is the outlier; Talk to Me is 95 minutes, Heretic is 111, and Skinamarink, which A24 did not make but which shares the liminal-space DNA, is 100. A runtime somewhere between 95 and 115 minutes would be the safe bet, and Parsons’ own instincts lean short. His YouTube episodes mostly run five to fifteen minutes and get out before the tension slackens.
The rating is the more interesting question. The source series is almost bloodless. Its horror comes from a camcorder drifting through a yellow office that should not exist, from a figure glimpsed in the distance, from a hum that stops. That style could easily land a PG-13. Then again, A24’s horror slate skews R, and James Wan’s Atomic Monster has a long history of pushing for the harder rating when it serves the scares. Until the MPA card appears on a trailer, call it an open question.
Cast and crew
The casting announcement in 2025 is where this stopped being “a YouTube kid got a deal” and started looking like a serious film.
| Name | Role in the film | You know them from |
|---|---|---|
| Chiwetel Ejiofor | Lead (character details withheld) | 12 Years a Slave, Doctor Strange, Serenity |
| Renate Reinsve | Lead (character details withheld) | The Worst Person in the World, A Different Man |
| Mark Duplass | Supporting (details withheld) | Creep, Creep 2, The Morning Show |
| Lukita Maxwell | Supporting (details withheld) | Shrinking, Genera+ion |
| Kane Parsons | Director | The Backrooms (Found Footage) series on YouTube |
| Roberto Patino | Screenwriter | Westworld, DMZ |
| James Wan | Producer | Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring |
| Shawn Levy | Producer | Stranger Things, Deadpool & Wolverine |
Mark Duplass is the pick that should make horror fans grin. He is the genre’s best argument that found footage still works, because Creep (2014) and Creep 2 (2017) are basically two-hander camcorder movies carried by his unsettling niceness. Putting him in a Backrooms film, which is found footage at its core, is a deliberate nod to fans who know what he can do with a handheld camera and a slightly-too-wide smile.
Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor give the film prestige weight that the original series never needed. Parsons’ videos barely show a face. The feature clearly intends to put real, recognisable people in those corridors and let them react, which is a bigger swing than anything on his channel.
What the Backrooms actually is
If a friend dragged you here with no context, here is the short version.
In May 2019, an anonymous user on 4chan’s /x/ board posted a photo of a yellow-carpeted, fluorescent-lit room with a caption about “noclipping out of reality” into a place with roughly six hundred million square miles of empty office space. The photo was later traced, in 2024, to a Hobby Lobby store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, mid-renovation in 2003. The mundanity of the source is the whole point. Everyone has stood in a room like that.
The idea grew into a sprawling, fan-written wiki of “levels” and “entities,” which got messy fast. Kane Parsons cut through all that. His series, The Backrooms (Found Footage), ignored most of the wiki and told a focused story set mostly in the 1990s, built in Blender on a home computer, about a research group that finds a way into the space and the people who fall through. The first video has pulled in tens of millions of views and the series is the version A24 bought.
So when you read “a24 backrooms movie,” understand that it is specifically Parsons’ Backrooms. Not the wiki, not the dozens of Steam games, and not the earlier indie films that borrowed the name.
Timeline from creepypasta to A24
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| May 2019 | Original Backrooms post and photo appear on 4chan’s /x/ board |
| January 2022 | Kane Pixels uploads “The Backrooms (Found Footage)” to YouTube |
| 2022 | Series continues with Async Research Institute storyline; views pass tens of millions |
| February 2023 | A24 announces the film, Parsons directing, Patino writing, Atomic Monster, 21 Laps and Chernin producing |
| 2024 | Source photo identified as a Hobby Lobby in Oshkosh, Wisconsin |
| 2025 | Ejiofor, Reinsve, Duplass and Maxwell cast; production underway |
| 2026 | Targeted theatrical release via A24 |
Backrooms box office and budget: what to expect
There is no Backrooms box office yet, and A24 has not published a budget. What you can do is look at the studio’s horror track record to see what success would look like.
| Film | Year | Reported budget | Worldwide gross (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hereditary | 2018 | $10M | $82M |
| Midsommar | 2019 | $9M | $48M |
| Talk to Me | 2023 | $4.5M | $92M |
| Heretic | 2024 | Not disclosed | $58M |
| Civil War | 2024 | $50M | $127M |
Talk to Me is the comparison that A24 would love. It came from the RackaRacka YouTube brothers, Danny and Michael Philippou, cost almost nothing and became the studio’s biggest horror hit to that point. Backrooms has the same shape: internet-native creators, a built-in audience in the tens of millions, and a concept that needs no explaining to anyone under 25.
The budget is almost certainly higher than Talk to Me’s. You do not hire Ejiofor and Reinsve and build endless photoreal office space on $4.5 million. A sensible guess is a mid-range A24 budget in the Hereditary-to-Heretic band, with the effects work being the biggest line item. If A24 ever discloses the figure, it will likely be after release, as it was for Civil War.
Where to stream the Backrooms movie
Nowhere yet, and not for a while. The path will almost certainly look like this:
- Theatrical release in 2026 through A24 in the US, with international partners handling other territories.
- Digital purchase and rental on Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play and similar storefronts, typically 30 to 45 days after the theatrical opening for A24 titles.
- Streaming on Max in the US, which is where A24’s recent output has landed under the studio’s pay-one deal with HBO. Talk to Me, Heretic and Civil War all surfaced there a few months after their digital windows.
Outside the US, A24 films scatter across local partners. In the UK, recent A24 horror has rotated through Sky Cinema and NOW; in Australia it has tended toward Stan or Binge. Check your region’s listings once the theatrical run winds down, because these deals change year to year.
One format note for people who care: A24 has released its bigger titles in Dolby Atmos mixes, and Backrooms is a film where sound will do half the work. Parsons’ series is built on fluorescent hum and sudden silence. If a Dolby Atmos or IMAX presentation is offered, the theatrical run is the way to see it.
Watch the source series first
The single best thing you can do before the film is spend an evening with the original videos. They are free, short, and tell you exactly what Parsons’ sensibility is.
The Backrooms (Found Footage) is on the Kane Pixels YouTube channel, and the first episode is the right place to start. A camcorder in 1996 catches someone stumbling into the yellow rooms and that is all you get: wandering, a growing sense of wrongness, and a figure that should not be there. Later episodes pull back to show the Async Research Institute and how the space was discovered, which turns a one-shot creepypasta into something with an actual plot.
The series suits anyone who finds empty buildings unsettling, who loved The Blair Witch Project (1999) for its restraint, or who wants dread without gore. If you need a monster on screen every ten minutes, it will test your patience. If you have ever walked through a closed shopping centre after hours, it will get under your skin.
Think of it alongside the great “horror movies supernatural” fans argue about, though it is a different flavour: no ghosts, no demons, just architecture that hates you.
What the series sets up for the film
Spoiler warning
This section covers the plot and reveals of Kane Parsons’ YouTube series, which the film adapts.
The series frames the Backrooms as a real, physical place discovered in the 1980s by the Async Research Institute, a company that figures out how to open a stable doorway into it. Early videos feel like random found footage, but the later episodes reveal that Async was sending people and equipment through, building outposts, and losing control of what came back.
The “entity” of the series, the pale, elongated figure fans call Bacteria, is barely shown and never explained. It appears at the edge of frame, moves in ways that make no anatomical sense, and is treated by the footage as something that notices you rather than hunts you. That restraint is the series’ best trick and the thing the film most needs to preserve.
The final stretch of the series pushes the story into the 1990s, follows a civilian who falls through after the Async program has collapsed, and ends on the suggestion that the Backrooms are leaking into the real world through old Async sites. It is an open ending by design. That is almost certainly the gap the feature steps into, with Ejiofor and Reinsve as adults with history rather than the faceless camcorder operators of the videos.
Whether Patino’s script keeps the found footage format is the big unknown. Mark Duplass’ casting hints that at least some of it does. A fully conventional, polished A24 drama in these corridors would be a very different film from what fans signed up for.
How the film fits the Backrooms boom
The Backrooms has already been a games phenomenon for years, which is part of why the movie’s audience is so large. Escape the Backrooms (2022, Fancy Games) on Steam is the one worth your time, a four-player crawl through the levels that works as one of the better “cooperative survival horror games” for a group that wants to scream at each other over voice chat. It is far more “wiki” than “Kane Pixels” in its lore, but the vibe translates.
Parsons’ series was itself a reaction against that sprawl. The film, by extension, is A24 betting that one director’s tight vision beats a thousand fan-written levels. The studio made the same bet with the Philippou brothers and won.
If you liked this
Skinamarink (2022, Kyle Edward Ball): the same empty-house dread, shot for $15,000 and somehow scarier for it.
Creep (2014, Patrick Brice): Mark Duplass proving found footage can be terrifying with two people and one camera.
The Blair Witch Project (1999, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez): the found footage template Parsons is clearly building on.
What happens next
Three things will land before the film does, and each one answers a question on this page.
First, a teaser trailer. That will carry the exact release date and, most likely, the first look at how Ejiofor and Reinsve fit into Parsons’ world. Second, the MPA rating, which usually appears on the second trailer or the poster. Third, the runtime, which gets confirmed once cinema listings go live a few weeks before release.
Until then, the honest state of play is this: A24, Kane Parsons directing, a 2026 theatrical release, four strong actors, and a producing team with Saw, The Conjuring and Stranger Things behind it. That is a lot more than most internet-born horror ever gets, and it is enough to put Backrooms near the top of the 2026 horror calendar. Whether it joins the “most terrifying” conversation depends entirely on whether Parsons can make a cinema feel as empty as a YouTube window at 2 a.m.
FAQ
Is the Backrooms movie out yet?
No. A24 is targeting a 2026 theatrical release. Anything you can watch today under the Backrooms name is either Kane Parsons’ YouTube series or an unrelated indie film or game.
Who directs the A24 Backrooms movie?
Kane Parsons, the creator behind the Kane Pixels YouTube channel. He was 16 when he made the first video and this is his feature debut. Roberto Patino wrote the screenplay.
What is the Backrooms movie rated?
It has not been rated yet. The source series is nearly bloodless, so a PG-13 is possible, but A24 and Atomic Monster both favour R-rated horror. Expect confirmation on the trailer.
How long is the Backrooms movie?
A24 has not announced a runtime. Based on the studio’s horror output and Parsons’ preference for tight pacing, somewhere between 95 and 115 minutes is the likely range.
Will the Backrooms movie be on Netflix?
Almost certainly not in the US. A24’s recent films stream on Max after their theatrical and digital windows. International streaming rights vary by country.
Is the movie based on the Backrooms wiki or the Kane Pixels series?
The Kane Pixels series. A24 bought Parsons’ version specifically, including its Async Research Institute storyline, rather than the fan wiki’s hundreds of levels.