- The director of the A24 Behind the scenes the film had its say on why some film adaptations fail
- Kane Parsons thinks some studios are ignoring ‘the true DNA’ of the franchises that made them popular in the first place
- Behind the scenesThe filmmaker is also the creator of a viral YouTube series inspired by the source material for this film.
The director of the A24 Behind the scenes The film explained why some film and TV adaptations fail – and how its first big-budget project will try to avoid similar pitfalls.
Speaking exclusively to TechRadar, Kane Parsons suggested that the reason some adaptations aren’t successful is because studios and/or a production’s lead creative team don’t fully understand why fans latched onto them in the first place.
For the uninitiated: Behind the scenes is a feature film retelling The Backrooms. A creepypasta (read: a popular internet-created horror tale) that has only existed since 2019, The Backrooms is described as an incredibly large interdimensional space filled with a seemingly infinite number of rooms and corridors and populated by monstrous entities.
Since its conception, The Backrooms has not only become one of the most popular analog horror games on the Internet, but it also spawned a wave of independent horror video games and served as the inspiration for a American Horror Stories episode.
Additionally, a viral YouTube series, which debuted in 2022, has racked up hundreds of millions of views and helped shape the vast history of The Backrooms. The person behind this YouTube phenomenon? Parsons, then 16, was hired to direct A24’s film adaptation a little over a year after his first video metaphorically caught fire.
Given his leading role in popularizing The Backrooms and fleshing out its mythos through his short films, Parsons seems like the ideal candidate to direct Backstage. It’s a decision that, despite Parsons’ young age (he’s only 20), should also pay off, especially with Behind the scenes should lure longtime fans of its source material and Parsons’ work to see if his big screen adaptation is as faithful as Behind the scenes” the trailer suggests.
Other studios may also want to take this early expert sheet out of the A24 playbook, especially from the perspective of live-action reimaginings of other forms of media. Indeed, from Netflix Cowboy Bebop TV show and Paramount The Last Airbender film, at resident Evil films and more, Parsons believes that studio interference and/or hiring the wrong people to oversee such adaptations are to blame for their downfall.
“I think what’s happening is there’s an overvaluation of costumes worn by a PI [intellectual property]” Parsons told me when I asked him how Behind the scenes threads the needle to please die-hard fans of The Backrooms and movie buffs in general.
“And that’s where most film adaptations go wrong,” he continued. “It’s almost as if the skin, the specific characters and other elements of an intellectual property are taken without any of the actual DNA that drove those creative decisions in the first place. So I feel like what you need to do – and we did this on our film – is go back to the beginning and remember why people latched on to that initial message. [of The Backrooms] and my first short film.
“Basically, for all the history and depth, The Backrooms is a story that takes place on the outskirts of a fairly simple concept. Whether people have seen it online or not, I think they can understand that its composition is quite supernatural, so it will be quite digestible for them.
“And I would also say that the goal is not to fuel that simplicity in a negative way,” Parsons added of one of this year’s most exciting new films. “It’s about figuring out what was so effective about that very first almost sensory experience that fans had, and following that common thread to build this film from the ground up.”
Backrooms launches in theaters worldwide on Friday, May 29.
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