Steven Spielberg on set, directing 'The BFG.' Doane Gregory /© Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Steven Spielberg is the mind behind some of the biggest and best regarded films in Hollywood history, from blockbusters such as Jurassic Park, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones Franchise to Oscar winners such as Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan. His latest film, Disclosure Day, arrived June 12, more than 50 years after he invented the blockbuster genre with Jaws.
Yet a pair of unknown filmmakers have become the surprise box office story of the summer, with the rise of Gen Z YouTubers Curry Barker (Obsession) and Kane Parsons (Backrooms). Call it a moment of generational shift in Hollywood.
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Amid this backdrop, The Hollywood Reporter spent a Sunday afternoon in New York’s Washington Square Park, a common hangout for the younger crowd, particularly students attending New York University, to discuss the current state of the film industry and their feelings on Spielberg, who at 79 is one of the great living filmmakers.
“I’m first going to have to look at some of these movies,” said many of the participants initially — until THR started to list off his blockbuster résumé.
“Oh! Jaws was genuinely one of the first movies that I remember,” quips Katie Young, a 21-year-old student at the University of Rochester who is interning in the city for the summer.
Though for dramatic reasons.
“Because when I was a kid, I thought that when someone died in a movie, they actually died in that movie,” says Young. “The scene where the guy goes down and he gets torn apart in the cage — I literally thought that he sacrificed his life for that movie, and I was in tears for like two weeks. Literally. It had such a visceral effect on me.”
Steven Spielberg on the set of Jaws. Everett Despite the impact Spielberg’s films had on Young, she adds that most of her viewings of the director’s films have been because either her parents or a babysitter suggested she watch them.
“It’s tapped in,” she says of Gen Z audiences and the filmmaker. However, she admits, “I think a lot of our generation is really into grassroots things, whether it’s directors from YouTube or low-budget movies. A lot of these big directors, they’re appealing to these broad things, and there’s all these flashing images. I mean, even the Marvel movies, they’re just throwing so much stuff at you. You really feel like they’re not really catering to you.”
Noah Blair, a 21-year-old recent college graduate of the University of Indiana who’s also interning in the city, says, “Audiences in general, but especially audiences my age, are getting so overwhelmed by all of the CGI movies — the Marvel epidemic. It really deterred a lot of people from wanting to go and see these big-budget movies.”
Turning to Spielberg, he notes that people his age have seen many of the filmmaker’s movies, but likely were not ravenous fans growing up.
“Sure, we’ve all watched them, and some people probably grew up watching them all the time, says Blair. “But I don’t think they’re the movies people my age are going to look back on in 20 years and say, ‘I watched that all the time.’ They’ll probably think about films that came out more recently.”
So, what does Gen Z want to see?
According to Blair, originality, practical filmmaking and emerging voices matter more than franchises and giant visual effects spectacles.
“That is more attractive to audiences my age than a Marvel, DC or even a big-budget A24 movie at this point. If it’s a movie that doesn’t look like much effort was put into it but has a good story, that’s just way more attractive,” says Blair.
That may help explain why two YouTubers in their 20s became the biggest box office story of the summer.
Backrooms filmmaker Kane Parsons and Obsession filmmaker Curry Barker Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty Images; Amanda Edwards/Getty Images Barker, 26, who was already of YouTube fame with his comedy shorts channel That’s a Bad Idea, kicked things off with the release of Obsession on May 15, an original horror film that follows a young guy named Bear (Michael Johnston), who uses a cursed novelty item, One Wish Willow, to wish for his crush, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), to love him more than anyone else in the world. The wish works, but comes with dangerous consequences.
Coming off its sixth weekend at the box office, Obsession has grossed more than $334 million globally on a $750,000 budget, becoming Focus Features’ highest grossing film of all time.
Two weeks later, Parsons, now 21, released Backrooms. The film is an adaptation of his viral YouTube short film series and follows a failed architect, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who stumbles across an endless series of rooms in the furniture store he manages. Backrooms landed the biggest opening in A24 history with $81.4 million on a $10 million budget and made Parsons the youngest filmmaker in history to top the domestic box office. Its global haul stands at $276.9 million, the biggest of all time for A24.
A couple of weeks after their films hit theaters, Spielberg praised the young filmmakers for their accomplishments and said he “loved” Obsession, though he had not yet seen Backrooms.
Spielberg can relate to the success they’ve achieved so early in their careers. The Oscar winner was also in his 20s when he directed Jaws (1975), which went on to win three Academy Awards and became the first summer blockbuster.
In another connection with the two filmmakers, Obsession also became the first movie since Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) to have its second and third weekends increase rather than fall.
Yet while younger audiences embraced Barker and Parsons, Spielberg’s latest release has struggled to generate the same enthusiasm among Gen Z moviegoers.
On opening weekend, 86 percent of the audience for Backrooms was under 35 and more than half were under 25. In contrast, Disclosure Day’s opening weekend appealed more to older audiences, with 59 percent over 35.
“I think the reason why so many people went to see Obsession and Backrooms was mainly because of the hype that was built around it,” says Hannah Sperling, a 22-year-old recent NYU film school graduate who watched Spielberg’s movies as part of her curriculum. “But with Disclosure Day, I think the reason why it’s not going to do as well, in my opinion, would be mainly because of the advertising surrounding it. No one wants to watch a film about the world ending.”
On the flip side, she adds, “Obsession did really well with their marketing. Same with Backrooms being such a viral sensation.”
It also be the result of younger moviegoers yearning to see work from filmmakers they feel they can actually communicate with.
“You could never chat with Steven Spielberg about his movie; that has never been an option. But for modern filmmakers like Curry Barker, he replies to comments on [social media]. There’s less of a pedestal,” says Josua Karnbo, a 30-year-old millennial who was in town from Sweden to visit a friend who’s an exchange student for the semester.
The cast of Obsession was also a group of relatively unknowns, something Karnbo wants to see more of, compared to the cast of upcoming summer blockbusters like Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which features a star-studded cast including Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.
“Everyone in the new Odyssey is super famous,” he says. “I think people enjoy being introduced to brand new actors even more nowadays, knowing that every single person in Odyssey, even the most unimportant role, is going to be played by, like, Matt Damon. It’s so fun to see a movie where you don’t know anyone; everyone feels like regular people.”
Blair agrees that younger audiences are eager to discover new talent, citing Obsession star Navarrette as someone poised to “blow up.”
There is also a whole online ecosystem surrounding movies that did not exist when Spielberg was starting out, and while that surely helped Obsession and Backrooms, it also can be tiring for audiences.
“Back in the day, a movie came out and then you went to watch it. Maybe you read a review in the newspaper or talked to friends who had seen it,” says Karnbo. “Now there’s a constant barrage of Facebook feeds, Instagram posts and ads telling you what to think about it, what others think about it, or the latest controversy surrounding the director or actor. There’s so much media and discourse surrounding everything except the movie.”
While Gen Z may be gravitating toward YouTubers, indie filmmakers and emerging voices, the consensus among those interviewed was that no one has yet matched Spielberg’s combination of longevity, influence and commercial success.
“If you were going to ask someone to be the next Spielberg, they’d have to be able to make as many movies as he made, and they all would have to be hits,” Sperling says. “Curry Barker’s very talented, and Obsession is great, but that can just be luck, too. There’s so many filmmakers I love that make great films, but they just haven’t made the repertoire that Steven Spielberg did.”
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