BACKROOMS Director Kane Parsons Edited the Extended Cut on His Laptop in Under Two Weeks Like One of His YouTube Projects
Kane Parsons, the creator who turned his viral Backrooms YouTube series into one of the year's biggest theatrical hits, has revealed that he approached the film's newly released extended cut the same way he used to make videos for his YouTube channel.
Parsons shared the update on Discord about Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition, which was later posted to Twitter, explaining just how quickly the new material came together.
"I had a lot of fun making Everything Must Go. The whale thing was made in just under two weeks. All Blender on my laptop. Only finished it like three days ago. Super cool being able to follow the YouTube pipeline but have it delivered at such a ludicrously huge scale."
That's a pretty incredible workflow for a major theatrical release, but if you've followed Parsons' career, it actually makes perfect sense.
Before Hollywood came calling, he built a massive audience on his YouTube channel, KanePixels, where he created the original Backrooms web series that helped define the internet's obsession with creepy liminal spaces.
Today, the channel has more than 3.45 million subscribers, and Parsons has proven time and time again that he can create impressive visual effects from a simple home setup.
Rather than abandoning that creative process after making the jump to feature films, Parsons leaned into it. Even with a studio-backed release, he was still editing footage in Blender on his laptop, just like one of his online projects.
The extended version adds roughly 15 minutes of new footage after the credits, increasing the runtime from 1 hour and 51 minutes to just over 2 hours and 6 minutes. Parsons also explained that work on Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition didn't even begin until after Backrooms had already arrived in theaters.
It's easy to see why an extended edition became a reality. Backrooms turned into one of the biggest surprise hits of the year after opening in theaters on May 29.
Made for a reported $10 million, the horror film shocked the industry by debuting with $81.4 million at the domestic box office. Since then, it has earned more than $330 million worldwide while also landing an impressive 87% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
That's an incredible achievement for a filmmaker whose career started with independently produced YouTube videos.
Parsons' story is quickly becoming one of the most fascinating examples of how internet creators are changing Hollywood. Instead of leaving behind the fast, hands-on style that made him successful, he brought that same creative energy into a major studio production.
If you've already experienced Backrooms in theaters, Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition offers another reason to head back and see what Parsons added. The extended cut is now playing in theaters across the United States.