Twenty-one-year-old Kane Parsons is reflecting on a whirlwind summer in which the box office was undoubtedly bolstered by the release of his feature debut, Backrooms.

Speaking with some of the industry’s top executives at the Zurich Film Festival Summit on Saturday afternoon, the young director spoke about the health of the 2026 box office, which has catapulted YouTube natives Parsons and Obsession‘s Curry Barker to the top of Hollywood.

In a session titled “The Theatrical Box Office Resurgence! How to Get Audiences’ Attention in the Era of Social Media and Online Platforms?”, Backrooms filmmaker Kane Parsons was joined by Academy CEO Bill Kramer, President and chief content officer at Mattel, Robbie Brenner and co-president at Sony Pictures Classics, Michael Barker.

Parsons actually confessed he doesn’t think of A24’s Backrooms, starring Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor, as a traditional horror film. “I didn’t direct it like a horror film. I don’t view it as a horror project. I think that’s just naturally the path of least resistance from a marketing perspective, and it’s what seems comfortable to people as a framing device,” he said. “But I’m going to try to stay as oblivious to those labels as possible, and just focus on [what] think I have greater control now with future projects, so those sort of structures [should] probably be a little less forceful, I think.”

He also explained, when asked about how A24 tried to sculpt the marketing and distribution plan for the film, that he believed there wasn’t “a real sense of what it would be prior to the actual release of the film. […] I don’t think there [was] a feeling for what this would really be tapping into with people […], all these people who were familiar with [Parsons’ YouTube series] the Backrooms for years in some vague way. Suddenly, as soon as a trailer [came] out, it just activated a desire to see: ‘How did Hollywood mess this up?’” he remembers. “Or it [was] just a curiosity at the very least. And I like to think we did the core idea that they were familiar with justice.”

Justice might be an understatement — the film went on to generate an eye-watering $401 million at the global box office upon its May release. During the panel in Zurich, Backrooms‘ success was cited as a prime example of a younger generation’s desire to go to the movies.

“There’s an appetite,” said Parsons, “[of] Backrooms being a pre-existing but decentralized IP presence online. I think people are just looking for that newness, [a] detachment from more cyclical cultural icons that keep eating themselves,” he said about Hollywood’s tendency to churn out projects rooted in overworked IP.

Kramer chimed in to say that he didn’t realise YouTube and movie-going were so well-connected, “in a way that I don’t think we thought was possible. That for me was a big takeaway of this summer,” continued the AMPAS CEO, “and it gives me great hope for the film industry because […] we’re seeing young people come back to the movies, and that’s really key.” He explained: “More than half of our ticket buyers [at the Academy Museum] are under the age of 40, and we sell out every screen. So people love seeing movies in movie theaters. We just needed to attract new fans, and you helped do that, this summer,” Kramer said to Parsons.

Parsons concurred. “I think the notion that people around my age gravitate towards short-form material is…,” said Parsons, before Kramer added: “Reductive.” The young director agreed. “Yeah, it’s reductive. I hear that come up a fair bit. [It might be] statistically truthful, but I feel like the sentiment is more that [short-form content] is weaponized, algorithmically incentivized, and it’s not really something I think most people enjoy about their own wiring. They don’t love that their attention spans are being sucked into the spiral of mostly consuming stuff that is that short.”

Backrooms follows therapist Dr. Mary Kline (Reinsve), who enters an alternate dimension after her patient disappears inside it. The film adapts Parsons’ viral YouTube series, which he launched as a teenager.

However, Parsons was understandably coy about the prospect of a sequel on Saturday, simply telling Zurich: “We’ll see.”

The 22nd Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4.

Does AMPAS CEO Bill Kramer feel as though they’re taking a risk by moving the awards ceremony to YouTube in 2029?

“It almost feels risky not to do it,” said Kramer at the Zurich Film Festival Summit event on Saturday afternoon.

In a talk titled “The Theatrical Box Office Resurgence! How to Get Audiences’ Attention in the Era of Social Media and Online Platforms?”, Kramer was joined by Backrooms filmmaker Kane Parsons, president and chief content officer at Mattel, Robbie Brenner, and co-president at Sony Pictures Classics, Michael Barker.

Following Kramer’s keynote speech at the Swiss summit, he doubled down on taking the Oscars — which has aired on ABC in the U.S. since 1976 — to YouTube, in a deal that will bring the film industry’s biggest night to millions more people, translated into 30 different languages, for free.

He told the room: “As we become more global as an organization, the best way for us to reach a global audience of film lovers, film fans, [and] young artists is YouTube. I think the timing this year — Obsession, Backrooms, you and Curry [Barker],” he said, talking to Parsons. “[It’s] moving in the other direction from YouTube to theatrical for us; we’re an organization that celebrates theatrical filmmaking, but at the same time, the Oscars is a television show, and we want to reach a large audience.”

YouTube allows the Academy to directly engage with their audience and film fans in a way that “we just can’t do right now,” continued Kramer. “It gives the Academy more control in engaging with fandom and film lovers and film fans and viewers of the Oscars. Right now more people outside of the U.S. watch the Oscars than in the U.S., and this allows us to capture that audience a lot more,” he said.

When probed by Deadline‘s Andreas Wiseman if he believes the deal to be risky, Kramer said: “Not at all. It almost feels risky to not do it because we’re looking at the future, and the deal starts in [20]29, so that’s our 101st Oscars. And with each month, a larger percentage of the TV-watching audience is on YouTube, and those numbers are increasing. So I don’t think it’s a risk. We have a great partnership with Disney right now. I have to say they’ve been amazing partners and will continue to be for the next two years. But we’re already deep in discussions with [YouTube CEO] Neal Mohan and his team, so I think you’ll see a very different-looking Oscars that allows you to engage with the show in more interactive and deep ways than we can do right now.”

He responded when Wiseman asked if the deal was lucrative: “It was a good deal.”

As part of the deal, YouTube will broadcast not only the Oscars ceremony itself — which generated $150 million in revenue for the Academy from 2024 to 2025, the vast majority via the TV rights deal with Disney — but also a significant amount of related content. Also coming to YouTube: red carpet pre-show and behind-the-scenes in-show content; the Oscar nominations announcement; the Governors Awards, at which the Academy presents honorary Oscars and occasionally the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award; the Oscars Nominees Luncheon; the Student Academy Awards ceremony; the Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony; Academy member and filmmaker interviews; film education programs; podcasts and more.

The TV audience for the 2026 Oscars declined, drawing 17.86 million viewers on ABC and Hulu, based on Nielsen’s big data plus panel ratings. That’s down about 9 percent from 2025’s Oscars, which drew 19.69 million viewers for a post-pandemic high, and the smallest audience for the awards since 2022, when 16.68 million people watched.

John Sloss’s Cinetic Media has launched Vertical Leap, an investment vehicle and producing pathway for professional athletes.

The initiative is designed to give athletes/members “a working seat inside Cinetic’s slate, with access to rough cuts, creative input, and the same industry guidance the company provides the filmmakers behind its most successful projects.”

The end goal is for member athletes to build a production career off the back of their training in the program.

Cost for athletes to become members is $25,000 per year with participants pitched a minimum of 10 documentary projects “vetted from established, profitable directors and producers”.

Investors are then able to back additional projects should they get the bug. The opportunities are in docs for now, but Sloss told Deadline that members are already asking about potential investment in non-doc projects.

Sloss says he has signed up 10 “prominent” athletes, with plans to expand the pool up to 50 current and former players. He’s keen to attract athletes from different sports — including tennis, hockey, cricket, darts etc — but says so far the biggest demand has come from NFL and NBA. Deadline understands that three college footballers — from the Michigan Wolverines — are pooling part of their NIL together for a membership.

To fuel the new initiative two people have been repositioned from the Cinetic team and Sloss says he expects to add a few more employees for the label. The program was trailed in Puck yesterday and Sloss will discuss it publicly for the first time on stage at today’s Zurich Summit.

Said Cinetic founder and CEO, John Sloss: “Vertical Leap offers a pathway for elite athletes to support commercial, impactful documentaries, while learning the ins-and-outs of film production from the most experienced storytellers working today. It is also a way for them to build something lasting beyond their playing days, expanding their brand, deepening their creative voice, and putting real equity behind the stories they believe in.”

He continued: “For the documentary community, Vertical Leap brings the adrenaline jolt of a new class of collaborators, athletes with real creative instincts and the reach to bring documentary storytelling to audiences who might not otherwise find it.”