At the time, it looked like Alex Garland’s “Civil War” would be the face of the new A24, the one that didn’t pursue potential sale offers and instead raised a big equity investment to make films that were more commercial while still adhering to the distributor’s mark of taste, subversiveness, and quality.
The boutique studio pursued even grander budgets with “Marty Supreme” and stacked casts with big stars, but it’s a $10 million horror movie from a 20-year-old YouTube creator that is now heralding A24’s next phase.
“Backrooms,” Kane Parsons’ breakout indie horror smash, in its second weekend reached $213 million globally. Domestically, it added another $25.9 million to hit $135.3 million domestic, but more significantly an additional $50.5 million internationally, making it a true worldwide hit. It opened at #1 in 42 different international territories, it was the best opening for an A24 film ever in the UK and 40 other countries, and it’s the first movie in A24’s history to surpass $200 million worldwide.
“Marty Supreme” got close with $191.2 million, but that was in its lifetime with a Christmas opening and a whole bunch of awards buzz, and “Backrooms” reached that total in two weekends and still has a long way to go. “Backrooms” actually dropped 68 percent in its second weekend domestic, which would be alarming if you’re “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” but to have opened as high as it did, we imagine A24 isn’t sweating anything about the film’s long term prospects. Something like “Obsession” has gotten to a similar level (now $224.7 million global) over a month by actually going up week over week, but these movies will likely both end up in the same ballpark even if “Obsession” is a unicorn.
But, yes, A24 releases $200 million movies now.
And the fact that the distributor did it with an R-rated horror movie rather than one that starred Zendaya and Robert Pattinson or had the budget of 10 “Backrooms” speaks volumes. It’d be easy to highlight a few other A24 titles like “Tony,” which is a biopic on Anthony Bourdain, or “Primetime,” which is about Chris Hansen and “To Catch a Predator,” as ones that speak to the type of movie A24 wants to make moving forward and believes could be a commercial hit. A24 clearly sees Olivia Wilde’s “The Invite” out of Sundance as a potential breakout, given the bidding war for it.
But a more likely candidate to be the next to cross that $200 million mark is Garland’s “Elden Ring” adaptation, which is based on the wildly popular video game and should carry a major budget. That’s big IP that A24 doesn’t normally take on, but then “Backrooms” is IP as well, just from an unusual source that Hollywood inexplicably hasn’t fully tapped. The studio must also be thinking “Backrooms” sequel or giving Parsons the same amount of runway it has granted Ari Aster to this point.
All of this is to say that we’re in a different world than the distributor that released “Moonlight” or “The Witch” to over $25 million domestic and were considered sleeper success stories. “Backrooms” is already in the top 10 highest-grossing movies of the year domestically and could realistically surpass “The Mandalorian and Grogu” or “Hoppers,” proving that A24 is a company capable of delivering a true blockbuster.
We feel safe predicting that A24 will reach this high bar again. But, given A24’s pedigree, it’s a little harder to identify what that next breakout will look like.