Kane Parsons made one of 2026’s most highly acclaimed and commercially successful movies in Backrooms, and everyone wants to know what he’ll do next. A lot of people think he’s going to make a Portal movie, based on Valve’s hit series, and his latest appearance has fans convinced that’s on tap.
Parsons recently appeared on Kyle Buchanan’s podcast wearing a Valve hoodie. Parsons is a huge fan of Valve and its work, so he very well may have been wearing the hoodie like anyone wears a piece of clothing bearing the name or logo of their favorite thing. But others believe it was an intentional choice by Parsons to wear the Valve hoodie to stoke the rumors of a Portal movie.
In the interview, Parsons said he’s working on three “dream projects” right now, and he can’t talk about them. The other people involved might “get me with their space lasers,” Parsons joked. He added that these people can “see through walls,” and fans are taking that to be another reference to Portal and its gameplay system that allows players to get through walls with a special gun.
Parsons said he has “loved” taking meetings with Valve. “Lovely people over there,” he said.
“Is there anything on the table in any way, shape, or form?” Parsons said of his discussions with Valve. He said he would be totally OK if nothing ever materializes. “It’s more having an abstract, creative conversation that could flow in like 30 different directions,” he said.
Don’t expect Parsons to make another movie anytime soon, though. He said he’s still at the “information-collection phase” and that he wants to choose projects that give him enough “mobility creatively.”
“I’m not trying to bite off more than I can chew currently. I’m trying to pick things that are going to force me to learn about subjects that I think are foundational to things I want to learn about later in life,” he said.
Parsons, who is 21 years old, previously told Buchanan directly that he was looking into directing a Portal movie “with a lot of caution and a lot of curiosity.”
In 2013, Valve announced plans to investigate the possibility of making Portal and Half-Life movies. Star Wars and Star Trek director JJ Abrams later came aboard to make the Portal movie. Warner Bros. was making the movie and hired a writer. In 2021, Abrams said he thought the Portal movie could get made.
As things tend to happen in Hollywood, however, the Portal movie never materialized, and neither did the Half-Life film.
Valve is known to take its time and be selective with its projects, and that very nature is what Parsons said he likes about Valve. Parsons recently said he respects Valve’s integrity for making things because it wants to, and not just to make money..
Anyone who has seen Backrooms may have noticed that the film’s creaking door sound was borrowed from Portal. Parsons has also said Valve’s Portal series has been his single biggest influence creatively.
Parsons said he is so obsessed with Portal that he travels to the game’s fictional setting in his dreams. Many people have pointed out that Backrooms’ set design gives off a lot of Portal vibes.
Despite his enthusiasm for Valve and Portal, Parsons is also cautious about adaptations.
“Needing to step into someone else’s view of life tends to damage the initial point for me,” he said in a recent interview. “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.”
Parsons is also connected to gaming through his family. His father, Michael Parsons, worked at Telltale Games and now works at Skydance.