Mark Duplass Slams Rumor Kane Parsons Didn’t Direct ‘Backrooms’

Although some of the cast and crew got lost on the set of Backrooms, writer/director Kane Parsons apparently knew where he was going.

Mark Duplass, who stars in Parsons’ feature debut based on his 2022 web series, defended the 20-year-old filmmaker against speculation he “absolutely didn’t direct this movie,” which makes him A24‘s youngest director ever.

“Hmmm, with all due respect I don’t remember seeing you on set,” he wrote in response to one fan on X. “When I was there, Kane was 100% in control. More so than many directors 3x his age.”

In Backrooms, premiering May 29 in theaters, Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as furniture store owner Clark, who stumbles into an otherworldly dimension of never-ending office space that hides chilling secrets, only for his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), to come searching for him.

Originating as a 2019 creepypasta on 4chan, Parsons adapted Backrooms into a YouTube web series when he was 16 in 2022, prompting A24 to give him a feature adaptation.

Parsons previously told Deadline in our ‘Disruptors‘ issue that scaling his vision for a big screen feature over the past four years has been “a very bizarre dream that it’s also been as seamless as it has been,” noting there have “really not been many barriers to creative control” amid his collaboration with the behemoth indie banner.

“They’ve just been really strong creative partners who have understood what was working about the original idea for people, like what brought them in Backrooms, and then where my specific interpretation of it lies as a distinct version of that idea,” explained Parsons. “They very much respected and appreciated how much to just lean into this one version.”