A major Gen Z land grab is well underway.
Only months later mania and Back rooms When Hollywood studios stormed the summer box office, they threw millions at Internet-savvy horror filmmakers and original online intellectual property in a battle for the dollars, eyeballs, and hearts (in that order) of Gen Z viewers.
The most urgent example today is Back rooms Director Ken Parsons, whose $10 million film is A24’s highest-grossing film of all time at $374 million worldwide. He is in the midst of full press from several powerful players who want to secure the future work of the 21-year-old author.
As I mentioned for the first time before puckSources confirmed to Hollywood Reporter In recent weeks, the heads of Warner Bros. Mike De Luca and Pam Abdi went to Parsons’ home in the Bay Area, where he lives with his mother, to court the director. On Thursday, he shared on Zoom with HBO President Casey Bloys and HBO Movies and Drama President Francesca Orsi that the proposed deal with Warners would span film and television.
Universal president Donna Langley also met with Parsons, after successfully courting her mania Director Cary Parker for his next film. A24, meanwhile, doesn’t want to lose him, per puck Flirt with him for A Back rooms A sequel as well as another original project.
It’s unclear why A24 didn’t sign a deal with Parsons before the film’s release Back roomsalthough Parsons is known to own the entire intellectual property, which began life as a series of short films on YouTube.
A24 has long been known for discovering new directorial talent, such as Robert Eggers (The witch), Ari Aster (Hereditary(And Celine’s song)Past life). While some directors, like Aster and Song, remained loyal to the studio, other filmmakers like Eggers and… Everything everywhere at once Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert signed deals with larger, more lucrative operations. Eggers’ home is now Universal’s specialty label Focus, while Daniels has signed a five-year pre-best picture deal with Universal.
Eye-popping deals for online content creators have ramped up this year, but they took off in earnest at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, when A24 beat out Universal and other studios with a seven-figure deal to acquire Talk to methe Australian horror film from first-time feature directors Danny and Michael Filippo. Other studios, including Uni and Warners, tried to court the horror filmmakers-turned-YouTubers for their next film, but A24 was eventually able to acquire the directors’ next film, 2025, sources said. return it, And put a Talk to me Sequel in development. Of course, studios still want to work with them to this day, with Warners said to be particularly high on the duo.
Sources say that perhaps in order to avoid exhausting the directors THR That in the past few years, A24 has requested that a first look at the director’s second project be included in the first deal. Apparently this was not the case with Parsons Back rooms.
Parsons’ feeding frenzy follows a similar search for land mania Director Parker’s next original project. for him mania Follow up Anything but ghosts It has already been filmed and is at Focus, with the studio landing that project following its acquisition mania From last year’s Toronto Film Festival. But, in the middle mania‘s epic, which grossed $400 million at the box office, a rival studio offered Parker a staggering $10 million deal for his next original project, without anyone seeing it. Ultimately, Parker remained in the Universal family for his third film, with the project landing at Universal Film Group and Blumhouse Atomic Monster in what was described as a rich eight-figure deal.
Parsons and Parker weren’t the only directors who made their money count. There have been countless creators shaping studios’ enthusiasm for Gen Z horror talent.
Earlier this month, Warner Bros. won a bidding war involving five studios with a multimillion-dollar deal to acquire the primary rights to Siren Head, a viral horror film behind billions of views across TikTok, YouTube and Roblox. Weapons Director Zach Krieger is attached to write and produce the project with Whales fallBrian Duffield, who can direct. Amazon MGM ended up winning a huge bidding war for the film rights to the horror franchise that was released on YouTube Mandela Catalog From Alex Kister, who will executive produce United Artists and Amblin.
If these numbers seem wild, there is real long-term business logic behind them. If successful, landing a creator early could mean hundreds of millions (or even as much as $1 billion) in revenue for a company over the course of a person’s career. Think about what Christopher Nolan’s decades at Warner Bros. achieved. Of profits for the company, or a ridiculous amount of money South Park Creators Trey Stone and Matt Parker produced for Paramount. Of course, few people will reach such heights, but it is these fortunes that partly pay for the early bets made by studios.
-Tony Maglio contributed to this story.
