You know what’s hot right now? YouTubers. There is a hidden wealth of talent over there. I mean, you have to wade through a lot of pig poo to find them, but there are some talented people. Take Curry Barker, for example, the director of Obsession.
You might not have heard about Obsession; it’s a low-budget movie that has done rather well at the cinema. That’s putting it mildly; it’s basically one of the most profitable movies of all time. Made with a humble budget of just $750,000, it’s made, at the time of writing, £188 million at the box office. It’s even outsold a Star Wars movie, which isn’t saying much, but you get the idea.
Curry Barker, alongside people like Kane Parsons (Backrooms) and Mark Fischbach (Iron Lung), are all hot property. You can imagine all of the Hollywood accounts rubbing their hands together, with the promise of some easy money. I wrote an article the other day about how Hollywood is now going to exploit the hell out of these new hot talents.
Barker has revealed that he would like to make a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said:
“I want to capture the rawness and the grounded-ness of the original.”
So far, there have been 9 Texas Chainsaw movies. Barker’s will be the 10th. There is also talk of an Obsession sequel, which makes no sense if you’ve seen the movie. There’s very little to expand on.
With Barker set to direct TCM, I can’t help but think he might be a one-hit wonder; he made a great movie, but is now out of ideas. However, I might be being a miserable old git about it.
Backrooms
The other big talent from YouTube is Parsons, who directed Backrooms. He’s another hot property who can literally do anything he wants, and Hollywood will throw money at him, hoping for another huge draw at the box office.
Parsons would like to carry on making more Backrooms movies. If you have seen his series on YouTube, you know that he has expanded the lore of the story, but still has it without a definite conclusion. I loved Backrooms, both the original series and the movie, but I also don’t want it to turn into a franchise. I don’t want to know what they are or how they got there. It might end up like Lost; it was all in Hurley’s head.
Usually, when a movie turns into a franchise, it starts to go downhill, and fast.
Iron Lung
I didn’t like Iron Lung, and I didn’t think it was a well-made movie. However, I do have respect for Fischbach for what he did. For a budget of just $3 million, he made a movie that he was passionate about. It landed well with his followers and people who loved the original game.
Looking around, I cannot see what Fischbach is going to do next; for the moment, he seems happy to carry on with his YouTube channel. However, you know there are suits in Hollywood, circling him like vultures, ready to pick the meat off his bones.
As I said, some YouTubers are hot right now and will hopefully go on to have good success. They might turn out to be one-hit wonders; only time will tell.
