Backrooms Director Is Backing Creators in a Fight With The Studio Over Fan Art
Every year, there are movies that take us by surprise in terms of their popularity and box office success and this year, one of those movies is Backrooms. Directed by Kane Parsons, the sci-fi psychological horror film has an extension of Parson’s viral web series, The Backrooms, themselves inspired by the “Backrooms” analog horror creepypasta. The film has been a massive success, but while that’s great news for the future of original stories in Hollywood, it’s less great for devoted fans creating art within that same, creepypasta inspired setting—and Parsons isn’t happy about it.
In recent days, Backrooms fans have started reporting that their fan-created art, including games, wallpaper, textile designs, and more, have been removed from various platforms after a copyright strike from A24. This sent up red flags in the fan community, especially since the art being created is not necessarily connected to Backrooms the movie but the larger, fan-based community around the wildly popular liminal space horror concept. Now, Parsons himself is addressing the matter on social media.
“I’m looking into this,” Parsons replied to concerns on Reddit (via Culture Crave). “Should not be happening.”
Parsons’ is Right: A24 Should Not Be Copyright-Striking Backrooms Inspired Art
Parsons’ has, since his first comment that he was looking into things, heard back from A24 and updated fans on Discord that some of the takedowns—specifically the wallpaper—was done in error. As for other issues, such as takedowns of games and the take down of an online fan account, Backrooms Online, those weren’t done by A24, though it’s unclear who was responsible for that. Parsons is being very transparent and very diligent in not only getting to the bottom of the issue but also resolving it to the best of his ability, even commenting that resolving the issue is A24’s job, but he’s “being thorough,.”
But thoroughness aside, there is one thing that Parsons was correct about from the jump and that is that the takedowns should not be happening. While Parsons did create the Backrooms movie and the web series associated with it, he doesn’t own the concept of “Backrooms” more broadly. It belongs to a growing niche of analog horror and creepypasta online where creators take a concept and run with it, often creating unique and interesting stories that are roughly set within the same parameters and worlds, but aren’t exactly connected. In the case of Backrooms, there are numerous horror stories and communities online inspired by the creepypasta, that got its start with an unsettling photo of an empty store room to 4chan years ago. Because of the somewhat crowd-sourced nature of the idea and some of the core elements, the reality is that all things “backrooms” do not belong to Parsons and, as a result, wouldn’t necessarily belong to A24, either.
What’s interesting about this whole incident, however, is that it could be the start of some very complicated rights issues as Hollywood takes a growing and more keen interest in viral horror sensations. We’ve already seen two—The Mandela Catalogue and Cartoon Cat—snapped up by major studios. In the case of another popular horror pocket of the internet, the V/H/S franchise is taking on The SCP Foundation, the largest fan-driven online sci-fi and horror universe to date. After the latter project in particular was announced, many fans raised alarms about how that would work with studio involvement since the various stories and creations in the SCP belong to their creators and community. They cannot be copyrighted. And that is largely the case with most of the popular creepypastas. These are stories that transcend copyright and the idea that A24, even in error, would try to claim some sort of ownership over the art and creations of a fan community may set a precedent that will only get more complicated as we go along.
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