Obsession & Backrooms just took down a STar Wars family film. We're in a new era.

What does all this mean?! Let's discuss.

I think it means hiring YouTubers with massive audiences and making a movie of something with years of established lore is smart business. I don't think it's as transformative as some of the social media hysteria is suggesting, because IP will continue to reign, but if it means more curveballs, then this is no bad thing.

Their success is amazing, I'm not sure if it's a "new era" so much as a continuation/evolution - horror has been one of the most reliable genres at the box office this decade, when so many other movies have struggled through/post-pandemic, going back to things like Smile, M3GAN, and Talk To Me in 2022 which were (somewhat) similar in becoming viral, word-of-mouth hits, Five Night's at Freddy's (which sort of feels a bit like a pre-cursor to Backrooms' success), Zach Cregger's movies, etc. Obsession in particular obviously takes it to a new level though, given its week-on-week-on-week increases are near-unprecedented (but Focus did pay $15m for it, so it's not like it being a success at all is some kind of shock).

There's obviously a YouTuber factor to this now as well - these guys are like big name directors/actors to younger generations because they've cultivated a following in a similar, perhaps even deeper, way (Iron Lung another good example). And part of me does worry that the lesson from this will be "let YouTubers make movies" and we'll get all the big studios racing to hire any and every YouTuber with a following and probably kill the fun of it quite quickly. Likewise "IP" in the Backrooms sense - to a lesser extent with how Barbie led to a deluge of toy movies being announced, there'll probably be more of this stuff as well.

I think the idea that "franchises are dead" is very much being overstated, and it's not simply wanting something "new" - otherwise movies like Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die ($9m), Mother Mary ($2.9m), Is God Is ($4.5m), to give just a few recent well-received examples - would've also performed better. I'm way too old to truly speak to what Gen Z and below wants, but the suggestion is that they want things that are "theirs," often made by people who can relate to their experiences, feelings, interests, and that does include IP (hence Minecraft being such a huge hit last year, the GentleMinions thing a few years ago, etc - it does work with franchises too).

Ultimately I think a huge part of this, especially for younger people having grown-up in a pandemic and with lockdowns but true of all filmgoers, is wanting something that feels like a true communal experience. Mando & Grogu didn't promise that, these movies did (and horror as a genre as always a) been really good at selling/delivering that, and b) been the most finger-on-the-pulse genre). I'll be interested to see how far it can go beyond horror - success of something like Project Hail Mary is different, but also great - but on the whole I think it's a very encouraging time for the box office, where both original movies and franchises can both thrive. (Also, make movies with lower budgets, Hollywood.)

Fuck me this ended up being long so I'll stop rambling

4 hours ago, James Hunt said:

Horror has been one of the most reliable genres at the box office this decade

I saw the title and went to grab the "always has been" gif... But James already perfectly put it. Horror has always had massive ROI in Hollywood because budgets are small and marketing is way more organic. I would even dare to say before this decade. I started to write about horror professionally around 2014. Since then, every single year, without exception, there has been some kind of discussion framed around "Is horror back?"

Horror has been big since the slasher era of 1970/1980, and while the kind of horror that blows is different, I see it as incredibly stable when we take into account the budgets and box office.