‘Backrooms’ Turns an Online Obsession Into Box-Office Gold

《回廊迷踪》将在线痴迷转变为票房黄金

The Journal.

2026-06-13

20 分钟
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单集简介 ...

Two scrappy horror films are taking Hollywood by surprise. “Backrooms” and “Obsession” have wildly exceeded expectations at the box office. Both spring from internet culture and have brought an unprecedented numbers of Gen Z-ers into theaters. WSJ's Ben Fritz explains what this new wave means for the movie business. Jessica Mendoza hosts. Further Listening: - Why Hollywood Can't Find Good Scripts - Hollywood Jobs Are Disappearing Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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单集文稿 ...

  • All spring, our colleague Ben Fritz's 14-year-old son has been bugging him to see one particular movie.

  • My son knows that I sometimes can snag tickets to premieres or early screenings.

  • Ben covers the entertainment industry, and the movie in question was a horror film called Backrooms.

  • That's how I first learned this film existed,

  • which he started asking me if I could get him into the earliest possible screening, ideally into the premiere.

  • Backrooms started as an idea on the internet.

  • And along with millions of other teenagers, Ben's son had closely tracked Backroom's evolution online.

  • This wasn't just like, oh, this is a cool movie.

  • This is like, you know, a big screen expansion

  • of this whole mythology that has been really meaningful to him for several years.

  • Ben actually did get tickets to the premiere

  • and he was amazed by how much his son had to say about the film.

  • He was like, oh, well, you have to understand that in this scene, what this image represents is X,

  • and it's kind of similar to his videos, but it's different in this way.

  • So was he talking to you the entire time this thing was happening?

  • No.

  • He's, you know, we've raised him Los Angeles.

  • He knows you have to keep your mouth shut in a movie theater.

  • But afterwards, he could not keep his mouth shut.

  • He couldn't stop talking to me.