Welcome back to What I’m Hearing, headed to New York this week in part to avoid the discourse if Spencer Pratt does/does not advance toward becoming L.A. mayor.

Tonight, it’s the big box office weekend that broke open Hollywood… or is it? My take on Backrooms, Obsession, YouTuber filmmakers, and the 27-year-old assistant who found a franchise. Plus, the 60 Minutes insurrection, Emmy campaign inanities, and much more…

Programming note: This week on The Town, Lucas Shaw and I welcomed the Gen Z filmmaker takeover and debated potential Imax suitors, and Peter Chernin revealed the media investments he’s most proud of. Subscribe here and here.

Not a Puck member yet? Just click here. Got a news tip or an idea for me? Just reply to this email, text me, or message me on Signal at 310-804-3198.

Also discussed in this issue: Taylor Swift, Ted Sarandos, Jimmy Kimmel, Curry Barker, Tom Rothman, Markiplier, Renate Reinsve, Jason Cox, John Hughes, Amanda Roberts, Peter Chernin, Tom Hardy, Steven Spielberg, Harvey Levin, Annie Leibovitz, Paul Downs, David Fincher, George Lucas, Lucas Ford, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Osgood Perkins, Roberto Patino, Will Soodik, Matt Drudge, Noah Sacco, Chris Ferguson, Scott Pelley, Nick Bilton, Lucia Aniello, James Wan, Michael Clear, Jen Statsky, Phil Rosenthal, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Stephen Colbert, Kori Adelson, and… “Enjoy the bagels.”

But first…

It’s Kane Parsons, of course, the 20-year-old YouTuber turned Backrooms filmmaker, whose $81.4 million domestic opening tripled the previous A24 debut weekend record and made him by far the youngest director to debut at number one.

More…: We can debate the impact and lessons from the triumphs of digital-native filmmakers Parsons and Curry Barker (Obsession), but the reality is the talent community is already seizing on this disruption as an opportunity. One source in today’s morning meeting at 3 Arts, the management firm that reps Parsons, told me it felt cathartic. After years of movie slates built increasingly on sequels and reboots of decades-old properties, the gatekeepers of Hollywood studios can no longer credibly claim to know what audiences want. “All of a sudden the Tom Rothmans of the world have to take some risks,” this person said, referring to the Sony Pictures boss.

We’ll see if that actually happens, because the vast majority of the global box office this year will still come from… decades-old franchises—including this weekend with Scary Movie, which first appeared 25 years ago. But the juxtaposition of outsize success for Backrooms and Obsession and a nearly 70 percent second-weekend drop for Disney’s ultra-processed cheese food product The Mandalorian and Grogu has the film business at least somewhat perplexed—and, frankly, optimistic. “Feels like a true bellwether of sea change for our industry,” one top filmmaker texted me on Saturday. “Feeling cautiously hopeful for cinema and the future of original filmmaking,” Project Hail Mary co-director Chris Miller tweeted.

No, I don’t think it’s 1975 and these low-budget horror hits are Jaws for Gen Z. But Backrooms and Obsession will likely be cited as the apotheosis of a trend that has been accelerating basically since Covid: Gen Z likes going to theaters, and they’re willing to show up for movies that feel “for us, by us.” Whether it’s meaningful I.P. (A Minecraft Movie, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Backrooms) or horror premises that don’t feel formed via a studio McNugget machine (Smile, Barbarian, Longlegs), the audience is real and ready to be mobilized.

Which isn’t really new. Hollywood has always reinvented itself via youth culture, which gave rise to the realism that dominated ’70s films and the John Hughes comedies of the ’80s, and more recently the found-footage microtrend. (While watching Backrooms last night amid a bunch of teens in Century City, I was reminded of how cool and different I thought Blair Witch Project was in the summer of 1999.) “Look at the number of people 25, 30 years ago who came out of MTV doing MTV videos,” media investor and Backrooms producer Peter Chernin told me last week. “You have to be relentlessly focused on where the next generation is coming from. And the next generation are making YouTube and TikTok shorts.”

The difference today, of course, is that the fandoms are created, nurtured, and grown exponentially online. David Fincher was a big deal in music videos, but few showed up to Alien 3 or Seven because of him. The modern equivalents like Parsons or Markiplier, whose self-financed Iron Lung grossed $50 million earlier this year, build their talent and followings online—and essentially unleash them on the multiplex. They have fans, not just followers.

Brighter Path, an audience analytics firm, estimated that Parsons’s fandom alone accounted for 22 percent of opening weekend “demand” for Backrooms, the single largest driver. Combined with preexisting I.P. awareness (13 percent) and YouTube trailer distribution (18 percent), digital-native sources were responsible for more than half of opening-weekend demand.

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Honestly, the only surprise here is that these digital natives are even interested in traditional filmmaking for movie theaters. Parsons told the Times he doesn’t watch movies and was perfectly happy on YouTube. He considers Backrooms to be just another episode of his web series, and that he’s got seasons of a Backrooms TV series in his head. But Chernin, one of the great digital media investors, thinks these YouTube filmmakers still dream of making movies for theaters. “There are much bigger budgets available, and to the degree they have a more ambitious creative vision, it is easier to realize that with Hollywood budgets,” he told me. Plus, Chernin said, “There’s something deeply satisfying to artists about creating things that people are going to watch in a communal environment.”

Anyway… welcome to HollyTube. For runner up, I’m gonna go with… Lucas Ford. Who?

Given all the credit grabs on Backrooms this weekend—everyone from the various producers to YouTube’s P.R. team are out there touting the shocking $118 million global opening for a $10 million fantasy thriller based on a 4Chan meme—I figured I’d start at the beginning. Or at least at the beginning of this movie’s wild journey.

In early 2022, Lucas Ford was an assistant at Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps production company. Ford, who launched his movie career working for the Toronto Film Festival, had started on Levy’s desk in late 2020 but had moved over to work for Dan Cohen, Levy’s partner, who charged Ford with flagging interesting material and creators he came across online and in tracking boards. “My niche was finding new talent, the ‘short of the week,’ stuff like that,” Ford told me this weekend.

In late January of that year, he clicked on a Reddit link to a YouTube video called “Backrooms (found footage)” that had been posted earlier that month by a 16-year-old called Kane Pixels. “When I started watching, it blew me away,” Ford said. “It was so immersive and interesting, Kane’s vision was there. So I messaged him on YouTube.” This was when the video hadn’t generated that many views. As of Friday, the Backrooms series had accumulated more than 224 million views across 22 videos.

Ford set up the first Zoom meeting with Cohen and Pixels, real name Parsons. Cohen also shared the video with 3 Arts, the management firm, which soon started representing Parsons, and with his buddy Michael Clear at Atomic Monster, the horror label run by James Wan that has since merged with Jason Blum’s Blumhouse. They started to put together a package, bringing on Roberto Patino as the initial writer. (Will Soodik ultimately did the draft that got WGA credit.) After assembling an extensive pitch document, they took it to more than a dozen buyers, including one studio head who will remain unnamed and who suggested the only way to get Backrooms made was via crowdfunding.

Kori Adelson at Chernin’s North Road heard about the project and helped bring it to Noah Sacco and Amanda Roberts at A24, which has a 50-50 co-financing deal with Chernin and agreed to develop it internally. It eventually gave Backrooms the greenlight with a $10 million or so budget. Along the way, Chris Ferguson, another producer, who has a company with Longlegs filmmaker Osgood Perkins, was brought in to physically make the movie in Vancouver, and A24 helped land Oscar nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve to star.

By then, Ford was long gone. He left 21 Laps in early 2023 to start his own production company, Ford Films, and now he’s trying to source his own breakout material. Hopefully he can re-create that magic result because one of the many downsides of being an assistant is that he got zero credit or compensation for his role in discovering a potentially billion-dollar franchise.

Let’s rank the 60 Minutes star correspondent’s quips from today’s extraordinarily hostile back-and-forth with the show’s new executive producer at a staff meeting (via leaked audio)…

Third runner-up: “You have slender qualifications for this job.”

Second runner-up: “I guess you wandered in expecting to read a statement off?”

First runner-up: “This is not the crowd to dodge.”

Winner!: “I find it odd that you would take this job knowing that you would never be welcomed here.”

Honorable mention, to Bilton for his meeting closer: “I just want to thank everyone for graciously being so welcoming. I look forward to talking to you in a one-on-one setting as these meetings are scheduled. And enjoy the bagels.”

Related: “Enjoy the bagels” is officially the new “Fuck off.”

More: As TV’s top-rated news show self-immolates, how is Netflix not grabbing 60 Minutes talent and launching a serious competitor for a global audience? Seems like a no-brainer, and this would be one show—not a full dive into the “news” business, which co-C.E.O. Ted Sarandos has said he doesn’t want to enter. Topical news is hard on a streamer, but “mini-documentaries,” as CBS News likes to call 60 Minutes segments, could go broader and bring in a recurring audience, like Netflix is trying with cheap podcasts, just bigger and more premium.

Speaking of Paramount…: Tom Hardy—still fired off MobLand. My recent report set off the tabloids, but nothing’s changed. I’ll let you know if it does.

25.5 million
Global attendance at AMC Theatres last month, the highest May number since 2019. [AMC/MPN]

21
Months on average between seasons of scripted originals on major streamers in 2025, up from 12 months in 2020. [Ampere]

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17
Movies and shows with budgets of at least $10 million filmed in New Jersey last year, generating nearly $1 billion in local production spend. [WSJ]

$5.9 billion
Ad revenue generated last season by the NFL, up 7 percent. ESPN boasted the largest increase (19 percent). [Guideline Insights]

70 percent
Odds on Kalshi of The Pitt winning best drama series (over Pluribus) in what the L.A. Times calls the “most underwhelming” Emmy race in years. [Kalshi]

Speaking of Emmys…: It’s now June, which means nomination voting begins in 10 days. Gotta hand it to Thursday’s series finale of Hacks, which creators Lucia Aniello, Paul Downs, and Jen Statsky seem to have scientifically engineered to court Emmy voters after last year’s comedy series loss to The Studio. Consider…

And speaking of Emmy stunts…: Funny to see producer/food TV host Phil Rosenthal constantly promote his Larchmont diner, Max & Helen’s, as a little “neighborhood” spot while simultaneously renting it out for high-profile F.Y.C. events. Peacock will take over the venue all day on June 6 for its “Betrayal for Breakfast” installation plugging The Traitors. (TV Academy and guild members click here for a reservation!). Hancock Park “neighbors,” on the other hand, may need to settle for a bland egg sandwich at Noah’s Bagels.

Jimmy Kimmel happened to have a New York writer shadowing him when the latest Trump dustup went down. [Vulture]

Of course the economics of replacing Colbert with Comics Unleashed is more complicated than simply a $40 million loss to a $15 million profit, as CBS insists. [Late Nighter]

George Lucas debuted his $1.5 billion museum with Annie Leibovitz photos, so we know it’s the classiest possible place to see General Grievous’s wheel bike from Revenge of the Sith. [Vogue]

Taylor Swift is back to fleecing—sorry, overserving—her fans, with three separate CD versions of the same song from Toy Story 5. [USA Today]

Related: If this song is halfway decent (or even if it’s not), the Academy’s shadow campaign to get her nominated and performing on the Oscars telecast will begin immediately.

Harvey Levin is boosting Spencer Pratt in L.A. via TMZ, just like Matt Drudge helped mainstream Donald Trump via Drudge Report in 2016. [Politico]

The death of access journalism isn’t only a Hollywood phenomenon. [CJR]

Taffy Brodesser-Akner makes a good case for interviews with A.I. actresses as the future of celebrity journalism. [N.Y. Times]

Jason Cox, Disney’s executive director of A.I., is weirding out colleagues with devotion to his chatbot “son,” Sam. [Business Insider]

Someone please option Chris Jones’s new book ASAP. [Atlantic]

Spielberg did The Rewatchables for 2001: A Space Odyssey. [Rewatchables]

A little grab bag of messages about recent items on the A.I. push, who’ll buy Imax and Nick Bilton’s takeover of ‘60 Minutes’…

“You’re underestimating the ‘resistance’ [to A.I. among the creative class]. There’s no way Jorge Gutierrez steps down from the Punky Duck show without an onslaught of negative blowback. If every creator knows this will happen should they think of signing on to make Amazon slop, the whole ‘GenAI Creators’ Fund’ will have no choice but to fold, and we human animators can go back to making shows the way audiences like to experience them.” —An animation producer

“Has anyone suggested that YouTube (and perhaps others) create a filter for users that don’t want to see A.I. videos? Seems like this would also be a way to slow the rise and/or spread of deepfakes at least on YT, which would be a way to help the public.” —An executive

“Was surprised during the Imax discussion you didn’t bring up the idea that a studio like WarnerMount would purchase it to lure a filmmaker like Nolan from Uni.” —A producer

“Re: Imax… Dolby is independent and has a high-margin I.P./licensing business for key media technologies that form the premium cinema stack through Dolby Vision, Atmos, Dolby Cinema, and its Doremi acquisition. Okay, it would add new elements to Dolby’s current capital-light licensing model, but strategically it seems like a cleaner industrial buyer than a studio or streamer or really anyone else.” —A consultant

“Got an idea for Bilton to expand 60 Minutes. Create another night of 60 Minutes, maybe even call it… 60 Minutes II.” —A news producer

Have a great week,
Matt

Maya Tribbitt contributed research for this issue.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or some bagels to enjoy? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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