The two biggest videos this week were both hosted by YouTubers

The YouTube-to-prestige-horror pipeline is looking very strong this week.

Taking the first place at the box office is “Backrooms,” an additional film Kane Parsons YouTube Videos with awesome found amazing office photos (taken from and 4chan threads) which defies physics.

Directed by Parsons, “Backrooms” made $38 million on Friday, and is expected bring in $80 million to $90 million at the local box office this weekend only. For indie studio A24, it’s its biggest opening ever — the previous record was held by “Civil War,” which made $25.7 million in its first weekend of release.

The second film, “Obsession,” brings out something that is even more interesting. True, it only made $8 million on Friday, and took $28.5 million over the weekend – but the movie (about love gone wrong) already made more money in the second weekend than the first, and its third week is expected to grow 19 percent.

In terms of content, most films that are released are usually between 50 and 70 percent in the second weekend; Last year’s “sinners” were considered Amazing word of mouth success because it decreased by less than 5 percent. Outside of Christmas releases (which have a lot of power, because of the holidays), growth from weekend to weekend was not felt – according to the Hollywood Reporter“Obsession” is the first film since 1982 to grow in the second and third weekend.

And like “Backrooms,” “Obsession” is a horror video directed by a filmmaker who first became popular on YouTube – Curry Barkerwho released The hourlong found horror movie “Milk & Serial” on YouTube in 2024. Barker has already shot his next film and is ready to direct the new remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

These two releases follow the incredible success of “Iron Lung,” video game that was released earlier this year. Directed by Mark Fischbach — better known by his YouTube account name Markiplier — “Iron Lung” grossed nearly $41 million domestically.

In New York Times article The latest “YouTube-to-filmmaker boommaker,” Rutgers Cinema General Manager Mark DelVecchio said that “a lot of YouTubers have tried to move forward to make more films and become less.” What distinguishes Parsons, Barker, and Fischbach? DelVecchio said that despite their youth (Parsons is 20, Barker is 26), both have “long life.”

“Right now, some of them have been making videos for a very long time, and that’s how you get an audience that will follow you,” he added.

By the way, while I haven’t seen “Backrooms” yet (fingers crossed for tomorrow), to be form “Obsession”. So I can attest that it doesn’t disappoint – I watched the second episode with my fingers in my eyes, and I probably screamed a few times.