The success of Backrooms has not only opened all the doors of Hollywood to the young director Kane Parsons, but has also literally rewritten the statistics and box office records of the well-known production company A24.
In less than a year, in fact, A24 has twice broken its all-time box office record: Backrooms has in fact become the most successful film ever by the New York studio, surpassing the record of 191,2 million dollars in global takings previously held by Marty Supreme, with Timothée Chalamet. And that’s despite a sharp drop in North American takings this weekend, estimated at -68%, with a second weekend of $25.7 million.
Total US gross by tomorrow is expected to reach $134.8 million. Total international grosses, updated as of yesterday, stood at $50.3 million, with global gross expected to exceed $185 million by the end of the day on Sunday. Again, the sharp drop is due to the fact that Backrooms is a heavily fan-driven franchise, with 81% of the second-weekend audience still under the age of 35. Backrooms achieves this record in its first 10 days at the box office. It took 53 days for Josh Safdie’s 9-Oscar-nominated film Marty Supreme to unseat A24’s previous most successful film, the award-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once ($147.9 million worldwide).
As previously reported, Backrooms had already become A24’s most successful film at the U.S. box office, surpassing Marty Supreme ($96 million) in its first six days of programming. This is a phenomenal achievement for A24: Backrooms cost less than $10 million, co-financed with Chernin Entertainment, with a promotion and advertising budget in the United States of a few million dollars. Backrooms stars Oscar nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve and was also produced by Blumhouse-Atomic Monster, 21 Laps and Phobos.
Elsewhere, other studios are also uncorking the champagne: Lionsgate’s Michael will surpass $888 million worldwide this weekend, becoming the highest-grossing film in the studio’s history. Focus Features’ Obsession, with over $151 million grossed by tomorrow, is already the highest-grossing film in the U.S. for the label and is set to surpass the world box office record of Downton Abbey, also produced by Focus, which closed its run with $194.6 million worldwide.
It should be noted that USA Films, Universal’s predecessor, considers Traffic its highest-grossing film with $207.5 million worldwide. Either way, at this point it wouldn’t be surprising if Obsession also crossed this threshold.
Source: Deadline
