This 20-Year-Old Skipped College Apps for an A24 Deal — and It’s Paying Off

Kane Parsons was born in 2005 — the same year YouTube launched. He is now 20 years old and directing an A24 feature film. Let that sit for a moment.

Backrooms, Parsons’s adaptation of his own viral YouTube series, opens in theaters Friday. The film follows a therapist tracking a missing patient through a bizarre liminal dimension, and it stars Mark Duplass, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell. With those names attached and an A24 stamp, Parsons might direct one of the studio’s highest-grossing films before he can legally order a drink.

“YouTube, really more than just being a cultural reference for me, has been how I know how to do any of the stuff I do,” Parsons told Deadline. For him, the platform wasn’t a side project — it was film school.

College vs. A24

When A24 came calling, Parsons was in the middle of college application season. IndieWire reports he had to make a choice: finish the apps, or take the deal. He took the deal. “It’s hard to think of many people currently living a more interesting life,” IndieWire noted, and it’s difficult to argue.

His Backrooms YouTube series — itself born from a viral creepypasta image of an unsettling empty office space — exploded online and caught the attention of the indie studio that has a habit of turning unconventional projects into cultural moments.

Mark Duplass Has His Back

Not everyone has been immediately convinced that a 20-year-old YouTuber was the right call to helm a studio feature. Mark Duplass — who knows a thing or two about low-budget, high-concept filmmaking — publicly defended Parsons, pushing back on speculation that the young director was more figurehead than creative force. Duplass’s endorsement carries weight in indie film circles, and it suggests that whatever happened on set, Parsons was the real thing.

Backrooms opens Friday. A weird dream come true, as Parsons himself put it.