Cordkillers 603: Backroom Boom

Kane Parsons’ Backrooms and Curry Barker’s Obsession show how online-native horror creators are turning low-budget digital momentum into theatrical wins. Meanwhile, The Amazing Digital Circus is testing whether a YouTube-first hit can jump to theaters before landing back online.

This week on The FULL Experience: Murder, She Wrote (118 - "Murder Takes the Bus")

Next week: Murder, She Wrote (718 - "Where Have You Gone, Billy Boy?")

YouTube: https://youtu.be/WQvTqpv8S8M

Supply Run

Kane Parsons and Curry Barker are the latest internet-born filmmakers making a theatrical splash. Parsons taught himself VFX and 3D modeling before his viral Backrooms short led to a $10 million feature, while Barker moved from TikTok comedy and horror shorts to the independently made Obsession.
deadline.com

Backrooms hit $118 million globally, including $36 million internationally, and outgrossed several major horror releases overseas. It also set the best Monday ever for an R-rated horror movie in June with more than $7.6 million.
deadline.com
deadline.com

Obsession continued to build momentum after opening with $17 million, rising to $24 million in its second weekend and then growing again with $40.2 million from international territories.
deadline.com

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu brought in $27.8 million internationally from 52 territories, dropping 53 percent overseas and 67 percent in North America.
deadline.com

The top global movies of 2026 through May 31 include The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Michael, Project Hail Mary, Pegasus 3, and The Devil Wears Prada 2.
deadline.com

The finale of The Amazing Digital Circus will release June 4 in 4,000 theaters worldwide before arriving on YouTube, giving the YouTube-born animated series a major box office test.
wired.com

Search Party

The Sidemen will launch Sidemen Presents: Side Menu on YouTube on June 18, followed by Prime Video episodes starting June 19 and weekly releases through the four-episode finale.
deadline.com

Issa Rae’s TikTok thriller Screen Time has become TikTok’s biggest micro-drama hit, drawing more than 150 million views and pushing prestige storytelling further into vertical video.
latimes.com

Netflix’s new A Different World will premiere September 24, exactly 39 years after the original Cosby Show spin-off debuted.
variety.com

The trailer for Silo season 3 promises chaos, time jumps, and a July 3 return on Apple TV.
engadget.com

Bad Bunny will voice a forgotten pizza toy in Toy Story 5, leading a group of abandoned toys living in a backyard shed.
bbc.com

Buried Treasure

Brian recommends Spider-Noir and is planning to start Star City.

Tom recommends My Royal Nemesis on Netflix.

Got something we should be on the lookout for? Email cordkillers@gmail.com.

Scanning the Horizon

Roku is rolling out its biggest home screen overhaul in more than a decade, with more prominent favorite apps, recommendations, genre-based sections, and bigger ad placement.
hollywoodreporter.com

Byron Allen is now the majority owner of BuzzFeed, with plans to use the struggling digital media company as the foundation for a free streaming platform meant to compete with YouTube.
variety.com

Allen is also paying Paramount for the former Late Show with Stephen Colbert time slot to air his roundtable show Comics Unleashed.
variety.com

A leaked Disney memo says the Hulu tech stack and standalone Hulu app will be decommissioned after users transition to Disney’s platform.
engadget.com

Chatter

Michael Gallegos writes that his wife, who had never really used YouTube before, started watching John Muir Trail hiking videos and now spends most of her TV time on YouTube, mostly following algorithmic recommendations and gear reviews.

George Rachor suggests The West Wing as a future FULL Experience and wonders how the show would play under the current political climate.

Andrew Bradley asks whether Netflix is still a prestige brand, arguing that its heavier shift toward reality TV has changed how he sees the service compared with five years ago.

Amar Payton asks about the NFL’s streaming distribution and whether the average fan really needs access to every game, especially with RedZone-style coverage and multiple games happening at once.

Trent Ernst finally solves his long-running mental mystery: the mustachioed “head canon Tom Merritt” he imagined for years was actually Top Gun-era Tom Skerritt.

Norm Fazekas thanks the show for the steady Hacks recommendations and suggests The Sopranos for a future FULL Experience.

Biocow explores possible spin-off-of-a-spin-off FULL Experience chains, including All in the Family to Maude to Good Times, All in the Family to The Jeffersons to Checking In, and the much larger JAG to NCIS universe.