We’re starting to learn what it looks like when a studio makes a meme into a box office sensation.
A24 released a statement on Friday after Reddit user, u/GnarlyNet, reported that the studio had requested that their “Backrooms”-inspired artwork be taken down off of Redbubble. The Redditor said that the complaint was made to Redbubble on behalf of A24 Films LLC.
“A24 makes no claim of ownership over the yellow wallpaper, the original post referencing it, or any of the community works that have since been built around it,” the studio said. “We will continue to support the artists who, like Kane, were inspired by it.” You can see the rest of the statement, also shared on the official “Backrooms” X account, below.
The issue was brought to A24 by Kane Parsons, the director of “Backrooms,” himself, who commented on the initial Reddit post on Wednesday to say, “I’m looking into this. Should not be happening.”
“I respect the rights attached to any specific film adaptation, but those rights should not be treated as ownership of the entire Backrooms concept, its broader visual language, or the community lore surrounding it,” u/GnarlyNet said.
This situation highlights the trickiness that comes with an intellectual property like “Backrooms,” which has made more than $370 million to become A24’s highest-grossing film.
Neither Parsons nor A24 created the concept of Backrooms itself. The general idea of a yellow-wallpapered liminal space filled with monsters that you can “no-clip” into stems from a 2019 4chan post. An anonymous user invited people to “post disquieting images that just feel ‘off,’” kicking things off with a picture (now known to be an old furniture store, alluded to in the film) of empty rooms, yellow fluorescents and pale wallpaper — much like the Redbubble artwork shared by GnarlyNet.
Another anonymous user replied to the chain with words that proved just as foundational to the Backrooms concept.
“If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in,” they said. “God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”
From there, many people began iterating on the concept of the Backrooms on the internet, leading to Parsons eventually developing a series of YouTube videos establishing his own set of lore. These videos eventually caught the attention of A24, leading to his feature directorial debut.
But Parsons doesn’t own the concept of Backrooms entirely — for now, nobody does — making issues of rights ownership murky. As A24 stated Friday, the Backrooms content that spawned from the initial post rather than Parsons’ film do not belong to the studio.
It’s an issue Warner Bros. might soon run into itself as Zach Cregger and Brian Duffield develop a film based on the creepy pasta concept Siren Head.
When a whole community on the internet contributes to the lore of a bit of collective horror, who really gets to claim ownership?
