4 ms·

That really shows the hunger for original stories and IC among cinephiles. Major studios were too afraid to produce something fresh instead of numberless seque

That really shows the hunger for original stories and IC among cinephiles. Major studios were too afraid to produce something fresh instead of numberless sequels and reboots in the last decade or so.

petercooper 4mo ago
This year seems to be turning a bit of a corner. Of the top box office movies so far this year there's Michael, Project Hail Mary, Hoppers, Wuthering Heights, GOAT.. with Obsession and Backrooms rapidly rising. Last year it was basically F1 and Minecraft (and while not sequels, both are arguably well known "franchises" outside of movies - but I guess MJ and Wuthering Heights are too ;-)).
- torben-friis 4mo ago
  Wuthering Heights was a remake, and Hail Mary was also a safeish bet since it's a novel by the same guy as The Martian. Not to say that it isn't an improvement, but we're still pretty far from seeing American cinema catching up to the world stage in originality, let alone to the golden Hollywood era.
  - peteforde 4mo ago
    I don't think it's a hot take to say: give Kane Parsons the keys to the kingdom.
  - muglug 4mo ago
    And Michael was based on some of the most expensive & beloved IP in the world (extremely popular with Gen X despite everything)
  - mrandish 4mo ago
    At least Hail Mary was an original IP with no built-in sequel opportunity. These days, I'd be happy if more major studio, big budget releases were adapted from original IP books. Sadly, I heard that the studio is apparently trying to figure out how to make a Hail Mary sequel (sigh).
    - tancop 4mo ago
      > Sadly, I heard that the studio is apparently trying to figure out how to make a Hail Mary sequel they put a lot of subtle hooks in the ending montage. i just hope they dont try to force it and make a direct sequel with ryan as the lead.
  - CGMthrowaway 4mo ago
    I remember reading Project Hail Mary years before the movie was announced, and thinking "this is written, if not exactly as a screenplay, in such a way to make it SO easy to adapt to a screenplay that given this is from the Martian author there is no way this will not be made as a movie" I enjoyed both the book and the movie btw
    - torben-friis 4mo ago
      Yeah a lot of authors nowadays just write screenplay, either thinking on licensing or just by being influenced by tv. Sanderson and Abercrombie come to mind as other authors that basically have action scenes and movie cuts baked into the books.
- hgoel 4mo ago
  Agreed, I've already been to the movies twice this year (PHM and Backrooms), usually it's maybe once every other year for some one-day anime movie airing. Really enjoyed both of them, just as with PHM, I think Backrooms is best viewed on a big screen.
manquer 4mo ago
Is it though? Backrooms was a quite successful web series on YT which in turn originated in 4chan boards. Only the medium being sourced from is changing from successful Broadway shows, popular novels or comic books in the years past. The calculus remains the same - properties with name recognition even from other formats tend to be green-light.
- vintermann 4mo ago
  The web series and the film also defaulted to a very SCPified generic horror formula with conspiracy, "containment" and monster jumpscares. But the original element that set backrooms/liminal spaces apart wasn't what was in them, but what wasn't. Sure it's creepy to be all alone, you may be afraid to get jumped, but you aren't. Some of the backrooms-inspired video games stay true to this concept. So point is, the "Backrooms" film author may be an outsider, but he sticks to a very well-tried formula - one mainstream authors probably avoid for being too cliche more than anything.
fontain 4mo ago
Does it qualify as something fresh? I guess fresh to cinemas but it is well established IP that has a readymade audience. Certainly a risk compared to Spider-Man: Another Adventure Again but the risk was in the execution. A lot like the Slenderman movie. Something like Iron Lung would be a better example of fresh cinema?
- matthewdgreen 4mo ago
  I'd never heard of any of the YouTube stuff and I was hooked by the premise. Whereas my son wanted to see Iron Lung because of the game.
Joeboy 4mo ago
The big IP films got better distribution and marketing, but there hasn't really been a shortage of original films produced over the last decade. The big franchise movies are a small proportion of films produced.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
darth_avocado 4mo ago
Matt Damon talked about this somewhere. The risk aversion stems from the move away from DVD sales. Historically a lot of low and mid budget movies relied on DVD sales to recoup costs even if theater releases didn’t get you as much money as you expected. With the safety net gone, studios don’t want to take the risk. They make big budget movies with massive marketing budgets that rely on known IP and established fan bases to guarantee income. This also ensures that the story itself is average because you want an average fan to like it. I think calculus somewhere has changed that is allowing these small/mid sized movies to be made again.
- lazypenguin 4mo ago
  It’s because nobody has made Steam for Movies. Let me have a movie collection that I can buy movies $1-$5 per movie and never lose it and I promise you I will buy a lot more movies. Just like people buy hundreds of steam games
  - mrkpdl 4mo ago
    The iTunes movie store launched 20 years ago. It’s far from perfect but it is essentially steam for movies. Sadly it’s been de-emphasised over time. But it is still there and was pretty good for a while.
    - righthand 4mo ago
      The iTunes movie store is not friendly outside of the Apple ecosystem. Making the entire idea not really affordable since you need a expensive electronic device to utilize it sanely. Might as well find another way to get to it at that point.
      - extra88 4mo ago
        MSRP of an Apple TV device is $129. The iPhone's market share in the U.S. is already over 60%. But neither matters because the Apple TV app is available on basically everything and can be used to buy movies. https://support.apple.com/en-us/119890 https://support.apple.com/en-us/119890
sandworm101 4mo ago
But is this fresh content? Back rooms and liminal spaces have a history in games and websites. This wasnt an out there pitch. This was an identified interest area put on screen. A good movie, but not something totally new.
- reshlo 4mo ago
  The trailer also reminded me strongly of House of Leaves.
gcr 4mo ago
Between this, Iron Lung, and The Amazing Digital Circus finale getting a cinema release, I think this is shaping up to be a great year for small movie productions
- krapp 4mo ago
  The Amazing Digital Circus finale got completely shat on by fans after they leaked the ending and harassed Gooseworx because they didn't like it. Is it worth being involved in indie production when success just guarantees a hate campaign against you? It will probably happen over Backrooms soon enough.
  - gcr 4mo ago
    That’s an amazingly pessimistic take, and a shortsighted one. Glitch and the TADC team are more than just one person. Gooseworx is burned out, but her work helped kickstart many early careers among her staff. I think the only people who characterize TADC as a failure are folks who consume too much social media. Like most projects, some indie productions (like TADC) end in creator burnout, others (like iron lung) end in moderate success, most probably end somewhere in between. We saw this with undertale, lights out, hazbin hotel, primer, el mariachi…
Barrin92 4mo ago
it's the exact opposite of an original story. It's so successful because it is so strongly based on viral and meme-able internet content that is immediately recognizable to any person who spends time on the internet, it has its roots literally in creepypasta. What A24 is doing with this movie is what the large studios have been doing, they're just doing it for a different audience. It's franchise driven content but simply 'gamer-coded' and sourced from Youtube or game-related media rather than from more traditional sources, mobilizing the gen-z fans of that content.
imgabe 4mo ago
This is something people keep saying out of inertia. It hasn't really been true for a few years. There's been a ton of original movies lately. I guess they just don't get a lot of press or people don't go to the movies anymore. Here's a few from the last couple years: Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die Honey Bunch Cold Storage Send Help Marty Supreme Dust Bunny Fackham Hall Eternity Rental Family Bugonia Roofman Ok, going to cut this short because I'm only back to October 2025 and it's already long. Seriously, there's lots of movies out there that aren't part of a franchise or other IP (other than maybe books).
- tanepiper 4mo ago
  Sorry to tell you but Bugonia is a remake of a Korean movie "Save the Green Planet"
  - matthewdgreen 4mo ago
    I think the key complaint about remakes isn't "the idea isn't totally original", the complaint is that studios are only willing to make IP that customers are already deeply familiar with. I don't think Green Planet really counts.
canpan 4mo ago
A similar thing is happening in video games. Big studios rarely have interesting games. Just GameTitle2026. Reboot of game from the 90s and no one is left of the original staff. Still a lot of people buy those, so studios continue to make them. Also indie games are too cheap. I noticed the need to correct my own thinking: Why should the boring game of a big publisher cost more than the great game made by a single guy? And allowed myself to use more money when I want to support smaller studios.
jfengel 4mo ago
I don't think that cinephiles are a huge target market, though. Major studios produce movies that most people want to see. The cinephiles don't like those films, but conveniently, they do like films that don't cost a quarter of a billion dollars to make. The headline here is about a movie that took in $81 million. The Mandalorian took in about the same amount in its first weekend, and it's considered a financial disaster. If people would start going to see more of those low-budget movies, they'd see a lot more interesting films. The cinephiles would be thrilled, because it would get those films into major theaters (over 2,000 for this film), rather than having to seek them out in tiny arthouse theaters for very few showings.

That really shows the hunger for original stories and IC among cinephiles. Major studios were too afraid to produce something fresh instead of numberless sequels and reboots in the last decade or so.

petercooper 4mo ago

This year seems to be turning a bit of a corner. Of the top box office movies so far this year there's Michael, Project Hail Mary, Hoppers, Wuthering Heights, GOAT.. with Obsession and Backrooms rapidly rising. Last year it was basically F1 and Minecraft (and while not sequels, both are arguably well known "franchises" outside of movies - but I guess MJ and Wuthering Heights are too ;-)).

torben-friis 4mo ago
Wuthering Heights was a remake, and Hail Mary was also a safeish bet since it's a novel by the same guy as The Martian. Not to say that it isn't an improvement, but we're still pretty far from seeing American cinema catching up to the world stage in originality, let alone to the golden Hollywood era.
- peteforde 4mo ago
  I don't think it's a hot take to say: give Kane Parsons the keys to the kingdom.
- muglug 4mo ago
  And Michael was based on some of the most expensive & beloved IP in the world (extremely popular with Gen X despite everything)
- mrandish 4mo ago
  At least Hail Mary was an original IP with no built-in sequel opportunity. These days, I'd be happy if more major studio, big budget releases were adapted from original IP books. Sadly, I heard that the studio is apparently trying to figure out how to make a Hail Mary sequel (sigh).
  - tancop 4mo ago
    > Sadly, I heard that the studio is apparently trying to figure out how to make a Hail Mary sequel they put a lot of subtle hooks in the ending montage. i just hope they dont try to force it and make a direct sequel with ryan as the lead.
- CGMthrowaway 4mo ago
  I remember reading Project Hail Mary years before the movie was announced, and thinking "this is written, if not exactly as a screenplay, in such a way to make it SO easy to adapt to a screenplay that given this is from the Martian author there is no way this will not be made as a movie" I enjoyed both the book and the movie btw
  - torben-friis 4mo ago
    Yeah a lot of authors nowadays just write screenplay, either thinking on licensing or just by being influenced by tv. Sanderson and Abercrombie come to mind as other authors that basically have action scenes and movie cuts baked into the books.
hgoel 4mo ago
Agreed, I've already been to the movies twice this year (PHM and Backrooms), usually it's maybe once every other year for some one-day anime movie airing. Really enjoyed both of them, just as with PHM, I think Backrooms is best viewed on a big screen.

manquer 4mo ago

Is it though? Backrooms was a quite successful web series on YT which in turn originated in 4chan boards. Only the medium being sourced from is changing from successful Broadway shows, popular novels or comic books in the years past. The calculus remains the same - properties with name recognition even from other formats tend to be green-light.

vintermann 4mo ago
The web series and the film also defaulted to a very SCPified generic horror formula with conspiracy, "containment" and monster jumpscares. But the original element that set backrooms/liminal spaces apart wasn't what was in them, but what wasn't. Sure it's creepy to be all alone, you may be afraid to get jumped, but you aren't. Some of the backrooms-inspired video games stay true to this concept. So point is, the "Backrooms" film author may be an outsider, but he sticks to a very well-tried formula - one mainstream authors probably avoid for being too cliche more than anything.

fontain 4mo ago

Does it qualify as something fresh? I guess fresh to cinemas but it is well established IP that has a readymade audience. Certainly a risk compared to Spider-Man: Another Adventure Again but the risk was in the execution. A lot like the Slenderman movie. Something like Iron Lung would be a better example of fresh cinema?

matthewdgreen 4mo ago
I'd never heard of any of the YouTube stuff and I was hooked by the premise. Whereas my son wanted to see Iron Lung because of the game.

Joeboy 4mo ago

The big IP films got better distribution and marketing, but there hasn't really been a shortage of original films produced over the last decade. The big franchise movies are a small proportion of films produced.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

darth_avocado 4mo ago

Matt Damon talked about this somewhere. The risk aversion stems from the move away from DVD sales. Historically a lot of low and mid budget movies relied on DVD sales to recoup costs even if theater releases didn’t get you as much money as you expected. With the safety net gone, studios don’t want to take the risk. They make big budget movies with massive marketing budgets that rely on known IP and established fan bases to guarantee income. This also ensures that the story itself is average because you want an average fan to like it. I think calculus somewhere has changed that is allowing these small/mid sized movies to be made again.

lazypenguin 4mo ago
It’s because nobody has made Steam for Movies. Let me have a movie collection that I can buy movies $1-$5 per movie and never lose it and I promise you I will buy a lot more movies. Just like people buy hundreds of steam games
- mrkpdl 4mo ago
  The iTunes movie store launched 20 years ago. It’s far from perfect but it is essentially steam for movies. Sadly it’s been de-emphasised over time. But it is still there and was pretty good for a while.
  - righthand 4mo ago
    The iTunes movie store is not friendly outside of the Apple ecosystem. Making the entire idea not really affordable since you need a expensive electronic device to utilize it sanely. Might as well find another way to get to it at that point.
    - extra88 4mo ago
      MSRP of an Apple TV device is $129. The iPhone's market share in the U.S. is already over 60%. But neither matters because the Apple TV app is available on basically everything and can be used to buy movies. https://support.apple.com/en-us/119890 https://support.apple.com/en-us/119890

sandworm101 4mo ago

But is this fresh content? Back rooms and liminal spaces have a history in games and websites. This wasnt an out there pitch. This was an identified interest area put on screen. A good movie, but not something totally new.

reshlo 4mo ago
The trailer also reminded me strongly of House of Leaves.

gcr 4mo ago

Between this, Iron Lung, and The Amazing Digital Circus finale getting a cinema release, I think this is shaping up to be a great year for small movie productions

krapp 4mo ago
The Amazing Digital Circus finale got completely shat on by fans after they leaked the ending and harassed Gooseworx because they didn't like it. Is it worth being involved in indie production when success just guarantees a hate campaign against you? It will probably happen over Backrooms soon enough.
- gcr 4mo ago
  That’s an amazingly pessimistic take, and a shortsighted one. Glitch and the TADC team are more than just one person. Gooseworx is burned out, but her work helped kickstart many early careers among her staff. I think the only people who characterize TADC as a failure are folks who consume too much social media. Like most projects, some indie productions (like TADC) end in creator burnout, others (like iron lung) end in moderate success, most probably end somewhere in between. We saw this with undertale, lights out, hazbin hotel, primer, el mariachi…

Barrin92 4mo ago

it's the exact opposite of an original story. It's so successful because it is so strongly based on viral and meme-able internet content that is immediately recognizable to any person who spends time on the internet, it has its roots literally in creepypasta. What A24 is doing with this movie is what the large studios have been doing, they're just doing it for a different audience. It's franchise driven content but simply 'gamer-coded' and sourced from Youtube or game-related media rather than from more traditional sources, mobilizing the gen-z fans of that content.

imgabe 4mo ago

This is something people keep saying out of inertia. It hasn't really been true for a few years. There's been a ton of original movies lately. I guess they just don't get a lot of press or people don't go to the movies anymore. Here's a few from the last couple years: Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die Honey Bunch Cold Storage Send Help Marty Supreme Dust Bunny Fackham Hall Eternity Rental Family Bugonia Roofman Ok, going to cut this short because I'm only back to October 2025 and it's already long. Seriously, there's lots of movies out there that aren't part of a franchise or other IP (other than maybe books).

tanepiper 4mo ago
Sorry to tell you but Bugonia is a remake of a Korean movie "Save the Green Planet"
- matthewdgreen 4mo ago
  I think the key complaint about remakes isn't "the idea isn't totally original", the complaint is that studios are only willing to make IP that customers are already deeply familiar with. I don't think Green Planet really counts.

canpan 4mo ago

A similar thing is happening in video games. Big studios rarely have interesting games. Just GameTitle2026. Reboot of game from the 90s and no one is left of the original staff. Still a lot of people buy those, so studios continue to make them. Also indie games are too cheap. I noticed the need to correct my own thinking: Why should the boring game of a big publisher cost more than the great game made by a single guy? And allowed myself to use more money when I want to support smaller studios.

jfengel 4mo ago

I don't think that cinephiles are a huge target market, though. Major studios produce movies that most people want to see. The cinephiles don't like those films, but conveniently, they do like films that don't cost a quarter of a billion dollars to make. The headline here is about a movie that took in $81 million. The Mandalorian took in about the same amount in its first weekend, and it's considered a financial disaster. If people would start going to see more of those low-budget movies, they'd see a lot more interesting films. The cinephiles would be thrilled, because it would get those films into major theaters (over 2,000 for this film), rather than having to seek them out in tiny arthouse theaters for very few showings.