The biggest horror hits of 2026 started on the internet, and Hollywood has noticed. Backrooms, a YouTube web series turned A24 feature, grossed about $400 million worldwide. Obsession, from the YouTuber Curry Barker and made for a reported $750,000, passed $400 million too. Now the checkbooks are out. Warner Bros. won Siren Head in a five-way bidding war. Amazon MGM, United Artists and Amblin won an 11-studio fight for The Mandela Catalogue. Then, on Nov. 3, the man behind Backrooms said what many fans had been thinking: some of these projects may not survive the trip.
I haven’t seen any of the films I’m about to discuss, because most of them haven’t been shot. So this isn’t a review. It’s a bet-sizing exercise: the confirmed facts first, then my own test for which internet-born horror stories have a real shot in a theater. The test, the odds and the verdict are my opinion.
How the internet-horror rush built, in seven dates
Iron Lung opens and the proof of concept arrives
Markiplier’s self-financed adaptation of the indie game took in $17.8 million in the U.S. on a reported $3 million budget and finished near $51 million worldwide, per The Numbers. Critics were split. His audience wasn’t.
Obsession starts its long climb
Barker’s debut, bought by Focus Features for more than $15 million out of Toronto’s Midnight Madness section, went on to cross $400 million worldwide, per TheWrap.
Backrooms opens to $118 million worldwide
A24’s biggest opening ever. Kane Parsons, 20 at the time, became the youngest filmmaker to reach No. 1 at the U.S. box office.
Two bidding wars in two days
Warner Bros. landed Siren Head. A day later, Amazon MGM, United Artists and Amblin won The Mandela Catalogue.
Parsons is reported to be directing Backrooms 2
The report came from Dread Central and was relayed by The Playlist and Screen Rant. No date or cast has surfaced.
Parsons draws a line
In an interview with The Playlist, he said some online projects would be hurt by a theatrical move. More on that below.
The American Film Market opens in Los Angeles
Variety’s opening-day report said the breakouts of Backrooms and Obsession have sent buyers scrambling for the next creator-filmmaker. The market runs through Nov. 15.
The two bets on the table: what is confirmed
Siren Head, at Warner Bros.
The Mandela Catalogue, at Amazon MGM
Checked against the sources below on November 11, 2026. Dates and deal details can change.
What Parsons actually said, and what he didn’t
In an interview published Nov. 3 by The Playlist, Parsons was asked about Siren Head and The Mandela Catalogue and whether Hollywood is approaching them the right way. He wasn’t ready to judge. But he did say some online projects would be badly hurt by the move if they’re “fundamentally built around the format of being on YouTube.” He added that some of the feelings he can create online haven’t yet been carried into a theater. In the same conversation, and in a Nov. 11 industry roundup of it, he described three original projects he’s developing instead of leaning on existing IP.
Notice what he didn’t say. He didn’t call either adaptation a mistake, and he didn’t claim a formula. He told a Zurich audience in early October that it’s reductive to say Gen Z is limited to short form, and he has said a twenty-minute walk down a hallway can work on YouTube, where the viewer controls the rhythm, but not in a ninety-minute feature. That’s the real point. His own film worked because he rebuilt the story for the room it would play in.
My four-question translation test
This is my framework, not an industry standard. I ask four things before I believe an internet horror story can fill a theater.
- Does the scare work without the platform? If the fear depends on a timestamp, a comment section, a glitchy tape or a viewer controlling playback, a theater takes it away.
- Is there a story under the lore? Mythology is a map. A movie needs a person walking it, someone we’d follow even if we’d never heard of the wiki.
- Who holds the pen? A creator-director brings fidelity and first-feature risk. A hired director brings craft and the risk of losing the spark. Neither is automatically safer.
- Does it get bigger when shared? A theater is where hundreds of strangers go quiet at once. Some fears grow in that room. Some belong to a phone screen at 2 a.m.
How I’d score the two bets, before anyone has shot a frame
Siren Head
Platform: Passes. The fear is a silhouette and a sound, and a theater’s speakers and scale only help. Story: There is almost no canon, which is a risk and a gift. Duffield and Cregger can write what a film needs without betraying a mythology. Pen: Two filmmakers with real horror records. Room: Yes.
My worry is simple: an image can hold a minute, and a feature needs a reason to stay. If the script finds a human story and lets the monster be the weather, I think this is the safer of the two.
The Mandela Catalogue
Platform: The shaky one. The series is built from the look of corrupted broadcasts and tapes, the very kind of format Parsons was talking about. Story: There is real lore here, with its own creatures and rules, and deeper than most internet horror. Pen: The creator directs, with Spielberg’s Amblin producing. Backrooms had a similar cushion, with James Wan’s Atomic Monster as a co-producer. Room: Possibly.
If Kister rebuilds the tape-and-static dread as character-driven cinema, as Parsons did, this could be the one people remember. If he films the series almost as written, it could split audiences. A 2028 date at least leaves time to choose.
So my bet is that Siren Head opens bigger and The Mandela Catalogue has the better chance of becoming a conversation. That’s a prediction about two films nobody has seen, and I hold it loosely.
Fans of the idea or fans of the filmmaker?
This is the question I keep coming back to, and an insider raised a version of it in TheWrap’s analysis of the YouTube pipeline: how many people bought a Backrooms ticket because of Parsons, and how many because they loved a meme? James Wan told TheWrap that Atomic Monster’s first film, Lights Out, began as David F. Sandberg’s 2013 YouTube short. That’s a filmmaker’s path. It’s different from buying an idea.
The creator films in this wave carry a built-in audience. Markiplier, Barker and Parsons each arrived with people who wanted to see what they’d do next. Siren Head has no creator following attached, so Warner Bros. is paying for a name people recognize and betting on the filmmakers’ own pull. The Mandela Catalogue has Kister’s audience, but it also has a format its fans love. Neither is the same bet as Backrooms, and I think the market is lumping them together too quickly.
What I’d watch next
Internet horror movie questions, answered fast
Will there be a Backrooms 2?
Reports say yes. The Playlist and Screen Rant relayed a Dread Central report in September that Kane Parsons will direct a Backrooms sequel for A24, and Variety reported in October that he was already working on one. I found no release date, cast or official studio announcement, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed.
When does The Mandela Catalogue movie come out?
June 9, 2028, according to iHorror’s report of Deadline’s news. The film comes from Amazon MGM Studios, United Artists and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin, with series creator Alex Kister directing.
When does the Siren Head movie come out?
No release date has been announced. Warner Bros. has Brian Duffield directing from a script he wrote with Zach Cregger, and I found no cast. One outlet floated early 2027, but I couldn’t confirm that with the studio.
Is Siren Head a YouTube series?
No. Siren Head is a creature created by the Canadian artist Trevor Henderson, who unveiled it in August 2018 as hand-drawn monsters composited into real photographs, per Deadline. It spread as an internet image and story, not as a video series.
How much did Iron Lung make?
About $51 million worldwide, per The Numbers, after a $17.8 million U.S. opening weekend. Markiplier self-financed it on a reported budget of about $3 million, and he later described the cost as a little over $4 million.
Who is Kane Parsons?
He is the 21-year-old filmmaker who began posting the Backrooms web series on YouTube at 16 under the name Kane Pixels, then directed the A24 feature that grossed about $400 million worldwide and made him the youngest director to reach No. 1 at the U.S. box office.
Buying internet horror is smart. Buying it as if every property were Backrooms is not. The ones that work will be the ones where a filmmaker rebuilds the fear for a room full of strangers instead of copying what worked on a phone. I like Siren Head’s blank slate and I’m most curious about The Mandela Catalogue, but I won’t call either a hit until there’s a frame of footage to judge.
