Sequels, remakes, and everything in between have become the currency of the day in La La Land, with studio execs seemingly terrified to sign off on any big-budget original and the impending threat of box office flops.
It could be the culture, where average movies become toxic waste on the Twitter feed within a matter of days, as audiences are quite literally spoilt for choice for their evening entertainment, that anything that doesn't pass the pub test is destined to sit and fester behind closed doors as we too quickly move on to the next shiny thing.
It's a shame that the extent of our summer slate has become saturated with another movie about a toy I forgot I ever played with, or a tasteful remake of an '80s show I certainly didn't watch. It's diluting the product, and not the way to bring audiences back to the theatres.
So, the story of two indie horror movies grossing more than the last Marvel movie – and I should stress that Thunderbolts* was one of the better big-budget titles released from the comic book studios – has filled the cinephiles with a rare hope that studios might just learn the right lessons and confidently greenlight more original stories for the big screen.
It's that, or we'll be stuck with another cinematic run of (checks notes) Jumanji: Open World.
Obsession, written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker in his feature debut, was made for somewhere between US$750,000 and US$1 million. It has since crossed US$224 million (~AU$317 million) worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film in Focus Features' history.
Backrooms, directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons and co-financed by A24 and Chernin Entertainment for roughly US$10 million, obliterated opening weekend expectations with US$81 million domestically and $118 million worldwide in its first frame alone.
It is now A24's highest-grossing movie ever, with a worldwide cumulative of $212 million (~AU$300 million) after just ten days in release.
Combined, two films that cost a fraction of a single Marvel set piece have cleared roughly US$440 million (~AU$624 million) globally and are still climbing.
For context: Thunderbolts* carried a reported production budget of US$180 million and finished its worldwide run at US$382 million – a figure that, after marketing costs, left it somewhere between breaking even and a modest loss. In today’s complicated calculus, Hollywood would classify that as a qualified success.
And what makes this entire story so unbelievable is the origins of both of these unlikely filmmakers.
Before Obsession premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, Curry Barker, 26, was primarily known on YouTube, where he built his audience with projects like Milk and Serial, a thriller following a duo of YouTube pranksters.
After the TIFF debut, studios entered a bidding war, with Focus Features ultimately acquiring worldwide rights for a record-breaking sum of US$15 million.
Parsons, the VFX animator behind the Backrooms web series, adapted the concept that originated on 4chan and spread across Reddit and TikTok into a 105-minute feature starring the BAFTA-winning actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and Oscar-nominated Renate Reinsve.
At just 20 years old, he’s now the youngest filmmaker in history to top the domestic box office.
Of course, the studios most threatened by this moment are the ones spending US$200 million to open a film to less than half that and calling it a win.
Much like the much-fabled Barbenheimer cultural moment, the Backsession, Obrooms – perhaps not – movement presents a rare challenge to the status quo. And unless the upcoming Hot Wheels movie universe is the next billion-dollar franchise that I’m unable to see, there’s a clear takeaway here: It's not just indie darlings or festival favourites that have the potential to have their moment in the sun.
Gen Z will turn out in droves for the right idea, and, perhaps, the pipeline from online audience to theatrical phenomenon is shorter than the industry has ever allowed itself to believe. The talent was always there. The audience was always there. The only thing standing between them was a room full of executives who needed a sequel to say yes.
Maybe now they won't.
