Who’s the Next Curry Barker? Hollywood Insiders Pick the YouTubers With Box Office Potential - The Hollywood Reporter

Do you hear that sound? That is the collective hum of assistant keyboards trawling Reddit and YouTube at the behest of their bosses, who are looking for the next big thing in the horror space. The YouTube-to-horror feature filmmaker pipeline has been proving particularly profitable over the past couple of weeks. Curry Barker’s Obsession sits at $111 million-plus in its third week of release, while the Kane Parson-directed Backrooms has also crossed $100 million domestically. Barker and Parsons are the latest directors to have blown up after cutting their teeth with an internet audience. Before them, it was the Philippou brothers who parlayed online notoriety into a feature debut, Talk to Me, that landed at A24 after a Sundance Film Festival debut and soon became a hit. Long before them, there was David Sandberg, who released horror short films online under the name ponysmasher before landing a feature deal for his film Lights Out. While horror directors have long had a reputation for stretching a dollar and finding creative solutions to filmmaking problems, the directors coming out of YouTube are seen as being able to do so on an even smaller scale, all while capturing the attention of the easily distracted Gen Z masses. As the genre continues to be reliably bankable for both the major studios and specialty outfits, there has been a land grab for the next stars in the space. The Hollywood Reporter called insiders to see who could be on deck. Clark posts his high-concept, low-budget horror short films to YouTube, earning millions of views and a loyal following (as well as some Hollywood attention). His most popular short, Portrait of God, has over 10 million views and earned the attention of horror heavy hitters Jordan Peele and Sam Raimi, who are now attached to produce the feature film version of the story for Universal. He has also been tapped to direct a Blair Witch Project reboot, set up at Lionsgate.