Sea Change – or Tsunami?
The staggering success of BACKROOMS, OBSESSION, and IRON LUNG have created a rare path for independent creators within the biz. But what are the lessons Hollywood is actually learning, and will any of this benefit emerging screenwriters?
Wagons are being circled. Numbers are being crunched. Hard questions asked. And the answer – “Wait, you mean all this amazing IP has been right under our noses all along?” – is once again fueling Hollywood’s predictable and annoyingly short-sighted predilection for coattail-riding.
I’m talking, of course, of the staggering success of the indie horror movies BACKROOMS and OBSESSION, both of which are still killing it in theaters in their third and fourth weeks, even as big-budget Hollywood IP regurgitations like THE MANDALORIAN and HE-MAN stumble.
As of this writing, BACKROOMS has grossed $226,373,786 against a $10M budget – phenomenal. But wait – there’s more! OBSESSION has pulled in $242,663,965 worldwide against a budget of $750K, making it one of the most profitable movies in cinema history – a 320x return so far.
So yeah, if you think everyone wants a piece of the action, to quote Walter White as Heisenberg: “You’re goddamn right.”
This all began back in January with Markiplier’s self-funded sci-fi horror/thriller IRON LUNG. The film grossed over $50M worldwide with an estimated budget under $3M. A mammoth success. Hollywood and its compliant legacy corporate media hacks did everything they possibly could to ignore or bury that movie. Yeah, good luck with that. That’s what happens when you bring your own audience of 38.7M YouTube subs.
But now, the double whammy of OBSESSION and BACKROOMS proves that the YouTube creator-driven genre film model can no longer be ignored.
And you know what that means. If you can’t beat ’em…
I was not an early adopter; I had never heard of 20-year-old (!) Backrooms creator Kane Parsons nor of 27-year-old Obsession creator Curry Barker or their popular YouTube channels. I found out about these movies as their momentum built while legacy media releases got demolished in their wake. My initial response? Delight! Indie low-budget horror creators crushing it? Oh, hell yes. It’s about damn time. This had to bode well for indie genre creators in general, right?
So I fired off an email to our producer Ian Holt, who is attached to one of our low-budget indie horror projects. Would Obsession’s success help us? Perhaps names might be less important now? (Obsession has no names; Backrooms stars Academy Award nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor. Hey, $10M well spent.)
Holt’s response: “Obsession and Backrooms hurt us as much as help us. Both those films, while they are original low budget horror, are both also directed by social media influencers with millions of followers. Like with Iron Lung, these directors come with built-in
audiences.”
To quote the Bard, “Ay, there’s the rub.”
Because of course Hollywood is going to learn all the wrong lessons from this. Of course their conclusion won’t be, “Hey, maybe we should stop churning out terrible, second-screen-viewing remakes and sequels and IP-driven lowest-common-denominator shite.” Or even, “Maybe we should be open to more new and exciting writing voices and kick some of these untalented hacks, whom we inexplicably keep hiring despite failure after failure, to the curb.”
Well, about that… so what is Hollywood actually going to do? What is, “Call emergency meetings to look at all the YouTubers and TikTokkers with 10M+ followers and offer them movie deals, Alex?” Correct response!
So is this a sea change – or a tsunami?
Yeah, my fears were pretty much confirmed when this week The Dailies (an excellent free industry newsletter – subscribe here) reported:
The article concluded,
“The bigger picture: Everyone in town is wrestling the YouTube gorilla differently. Netflix licenses the podcasts (Charlamagne, Jay Shetty), Amazon pays a reported $100M a season for ‘Beast Games,’ and Fox’s Creator Studios (launched earlier this year) funds creators while letting them stay on whatever platform their audience already uses. CAA and TPG’s answer is the most aggressive of the bunch: own the businesses outright.”
So will we be seeing “BEASTIES – a Mr. Beast Horror Joint” next summer?
Bet on it.
Look, to be clear, this is no slam against Parsons, Barker, or Markiplier. All three made actual good movies and know what they are doing. They earned their place in the biz. They leapfrogged over the Hollywood industrial complex-approved systems designed to let the anointed ones in and keep everyone else out. Huge props to them.
But for the average screenwriter? Eh. It probably doesn’t help. Unless you’ve got 10 million YouTube followers. And if you do, then strike while the iron is hot, baby. For the rest of us? It’s probably just more of the same – keep hustling, keep honing and toning your material, and with every draft, remove one more reason for someone to say no.
In other words —SSDD.
And if I’m wrong – that will be the happiest helping of crow I will ever eat.
Keep the faith, peeps – and keep writing.