A24's The Backrooms, directed by first-time filmmaker Kane Parsons, earned nearly $400 million globally against a modest $10 million budget. The production relied on a blend of physical sets and innovative digital extensions to recreate the eerie atmosphere of the original YouTube series.
A $400 million return on a $10 million gamble
The financial performance of The Backrooms represents a staggering return on investment for A24. According to the report, the film grossed nearly $400 million worldwide,a feat achieved while keeping the production budget around $10 million. This efficiency suggests that the film's appeal lay more in its conceptual strength and existing internet fanbase than in expensive spectacle.
This success mirrors a growing trend in the horror genre where high-concept, low-budget films—often originating from digital subcultures—outperform traditional studio tentpoles. By leveraging the pre-existing viral nature of Kane Parsons' YouTube shorts, A24 minimized the risk typically associated with first-time directors while maximizing the reach of a niche aesthetic.
How 100,000 square feet of Blender files scaled to the big screen
The visual identity of The Backrooms was rooted in the use of Blender, a free 3D software used by Kane Parsons to create the original online shorts. As the report says, Parsons provided the production team with files containing 100,000 square feet of yellow-tinted environments.. These files were so expansive that they initially crashed the computers of the film's technical team, highlighting the sheer scale of the digital world-building involved.
To bridge the gap between a home-computer project and a theatrical release, production visual effects supervisor Edward Douglas and associate VFX supervisor Calvin Romeyn integrated these Blender files into a professional pipeline. Romeyn, who previously worked on massive productions like Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, utilized Unreal Engine and Blender to elevate the existing assets to feature-film quality without requiring costly, full-CG sequences.
The 30,000 square foot physical set limit
While the digital world was vast, the physical production was strictly contained. Production designer Danny Vermette constructed 30,000 square feet of physical sets across four stages to provide a tactile foundation for the actors. This hybrid approach allowed the VFX team to use the physical footprints as anchors for digital extensions, ensuring that the environments felt grounded.
According to the source, this strategy saved thousands of square feet of constructtion costs because actors such as Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve never had to physically interact with the extended digital portions of the labyrinth. John Pierce of Mr. Wolf VFX further refined this by building yellow wallpaper room extensions in Maya, blending them seamlessly with Vermette's practical sets to hide the film's lean budget from the audience.
The geometry behind the 'wall clipping' effect
One of the most technically challenging aspects of The Backrooms was the "wall clipping" effect, where characters appear to pass through solid surfaces. john Pierce of Mr. Wolf VFX described this as a minimalist concept that was actually complex to execute,requiring precise geometry, scans, and match moves to align the actors' physical movements with the digital clipping plane.
Despite the technical breakdown provided by the VFX team, some details remain unverified. The report does not specify the total marketing spend A24 deployed to reach the $400 million gross, nor does it clarify if the $10 million budget included the costs of the digital asset transfers from Parsons' original work. It remains unclear how much of the film's success was due to the VFX efficiency versus the organic marketing power of the original YouTube community.
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