Kane Parsons, the 20-year-old director of one of 2026’s most successful movies in Backrooms, is also a big fan of game developer Valve and specifically how the company is known to select its projects. Given the enormous success of Backrooms, people are naturally wondering what he’s going to do next, and Parsons teased that “stuff may already be moving a little bit.”
Speaking on The Town podcast, Parsons singled out Valve as the closest comparison to what he would call his North Star in terms of his creative philosophy.
“I think the integrity they have expressed with … the philosophy of, ‘Don’t make it unless there is a meaningful reason motivating it behind the scenes.’ Valve, they take it to such an extreme, where it’s obviously motivated by the hardware and the technology aspect,” he said
The host, Matt Belloni, then interjected to say Parsons’ answer sounded something like what Spider-Man actor Tom Holland said recently. Holland told GQ that he remembers having challenging conversations with Sony about Spider-Man: Brand New Day. He said he remembers saying, “‘We need to know why we are making this movie beyond the fact that it’s Spider-Man 4 and they make loads of money and we’re going to just have a big summer. Why are we making this movie?'” he said.
This way of thinking should be the baseline for artists, Parsons said in his explanation for why he likes how Valve operates.
Valve, for its part, owns a number of popular franchises that haven’t gotten lots of sequels, including the Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Half-Life franchises. And when Valve does make sequels, they aren’t always what people expect. For the Half-Life series, few could have predicted that Valve would make Half-Life: Alyx for virtual reality, but the company did, and it was a big success. Fans are still waiting for Half-Life 3, however, and it may never come.
Valve has the time and freedom to pursue projects in this way in part because of how massively successful its business is; founder Gabe Newell is a billionaire and has a fleet of megayachts. Valve has courted controversy, too, and the company is currently facing a lawsuit over monopoly concerns.
Also in the interview, Parsons discussed what’s coming next for him, saying he’s reluctant to work on an established IP–though there are “one or two” exceptions. These would be franchises from the early 2000s that resonate strongly and personally with Parsons. He declined to name them outright, and when Belloni chimed in to say naming them could help producers in Hollywood make it happen, Parsons teased, “Stuff may already be moving a little bit.”
That being said, Parsons said he is more interested in telling his own original stories.
“Needing to step into someone else’s view of life tends to damage the initial point for me,” he said. “So the only ones that I would look at are ones that have shaped my own experience of life so much that I feel like I have something to do with that conversation in the first place.”
He was asked specifically if he would jump at the chance to make a Star Wars or Star Trek movie, or an adaptation of any “big” franchises, and he said that doesn’t interest him generally.
Finally, Parsons teased that, among the possibilities for what he could make in the future, is a video game. “I’d love to look at games in the future,” he said.
Anyone who has seen Backrooms may have noticed that the film’s creaking door sound was borrowed from Valve. Parsons has also said Valve’s Portal series has been his single biggest influence creatively.
Backrooms released on May 29 and has so far earned an astonishing $135 million globally against a $10 million budget. It is A24’s most successful movie of all time in the US, and its first ever to pass $100 million domestically.
The movie is based on Parson’s web series, which itself is based on a 4chan creepypasta thread. It stars Oscar-nominated actors Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, as they explore liminal spaces at a furniture store.
