Kane Parsons just made history with Backrooms, and he’s already thinking about what comes next. The 20-year-old director has set his sights on one of gaming’s most beloved franchises, and fans of both film and Valve’s classic puzzler have plenty of reasons to be excited.
Backrooms, which hit theaters on May 29 through A24, has been a phenomenon by any measure. Made on a $10 million budget, the film has grossed $117.9 million at the box office, and Parsons became the youngest filmmaker ever to top the U.S. box office in the process. For a director still years away from a typical Hollywood career start, the achievement is staggering.
The film itself follows a furniture store owner who discovers a hidden portal leading to a vast alternate dimension of endless, maze-like rooms. The liminal dread at the core of Backrooms is precisely what has fans convinced Parsons could be the right person to bring another portal-obsessed world to life.
Kane Parsons Is Already Exploring a Portal Film
In an interview on The Town, Parsons noted he wasn’t interested in taking on IP next “barring one or two things” from his childhood, with early talks already underway. Speculation quickly pointed toward Valve’s Portal, the legendary puzzle franchise where players navigate test courses using a portal gun under the watch of the passive-aggressive AI GLaDOS.
New York Times reporter Kyle Buchanan confirmed the connection, revealing he had asked Parsons in early May whether he’d be interested in directing a Portal adaptation. Parsons said he was already looking into it “with a lot of caution and a lot of curiosity.”
The connection between Parsons and Portal runs deeper than just genre overlap. Parsons has spoken openly about how influential Valve’s work has been on his creative vision, and the Async Research Institute in Backrooms, an unregulated corporation that prioritizes research at the expense of human safety, draws clear parallels to Aperture Science.
Parsons first uploaded his original found-footage Backrooms series to YouTube in 2022 while still in high school, attracting studio interest before he had even applied to college. His instinct to protect source material and only adapt when there’s a genuine creative reason gives the Portal talk added weight. This isn’t a director chasing IP for its own sake.
No formal announcement has been made, and any Portal film remains in the very early stages. But with Backrooms still dominating the box office, Hollywood will be watching wherever Parsons points next.
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