Filmmakers Who Wouldn’t Exist Without YouTube and Are Taking Hollywood by Storm

Kane Parsons et Curry Barker, two filmmakers who cut their teeth on YouTube, are breaking through with their first feature-length films: Backrooms and Obsession. It’s the perfect opportunity to look back at these careers that began on the video platform.

In an era where the glut of “content” (that dreaded term) makes it hard to stand out, the rise of YouTube in the latter half of the 2000s allowed young artists to prove themselves, without necessarily following the traditional indie-film path.

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Despite an Internet that’s increasingly flooded with images of every kind, it’s fascinating to see how Hollywood and the industry closely monitor platforms and social networks, right up to today’s TikTok. Among these tools, YouTube’s aging presence and the perspective one can gain on its impact reveal how the site has helped launch certain careers. Here’s a look back at nine dream trajectories.

Curry Barker (Obsession)

On the YouTube channel That’s a Bad Idea, the young Curry Barker (born in 1999) had been making videos for nine years, hand in hand with his friend Cooper Tomlinson, before moving into feature-length cinema with Obsession. The comedic duo frequently tackled horror, with varying degrees of irony, both in funny videos and in short films.

In 2024, the friends stepped up to the next level by releasing on YouTube the self-produced feature Milk & Serial, written and directed by Curry Barker, with Barker himself and Tomlinson in the cast. The film, just over an hour long, may be made on a shoestring, but it quickly drew attention and today has over 3 million views on the platform. It was this breakout moment, in particular, that would allow Barker to see Obsession produced in 2026, for which he is both screenwriter and director (Cooper Tomlinson, never far away, plays the protagonist’s best friend).

If Obsession was financed with $750,000 (roughly the equivalent of about 100 bucks and a Mars bar by Hollywood standards), the film is already pulling in nearly $300 million and is giving the latest Star Wars a run for its money. Needless to say, Curry Barker’s big-screen career is off to a loud and promising start.

Kane Parsons (Backrooms)

Upon discovering the Backrooms concept on the internet with the famous initial photo that would inspire countless creepypasta creations, Kane Parsons jumped at the opportunity. On his YouTube channel called Kane Pixels, the creator known for ARGs and the language of internet horror launched in 2022 a series of short films developing a terrifying universe around the Backrooms. He is thus one of the pillars of the rise of the so-called “liminal” horror, resting on an unsettling aesthetic of imbalance within everyday environments that are just a little stranger than normal.

In 2026, he directed his first feature-length film directly inspired by his shorts and simply titled Backrooms. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, Backrooms managed to capture the interest of the vast internet community fascinated by creepypasta and liminal horror, as the film exploded in the United States, followed by its premiere in France. As of writing, his journey is far from over (the film has grossed over $260 million on a budget of only $10 million), and Kane Parsons, who is already thinking about making a film based on the game Portal, has become one of the hottest new directors around.