A 20-year-old who started posting videos online at age 9 just directed a horror film that made $250 million worldwide. His name is Kane Parsons, and his movie "Backrooms" shows how Hollywood is changing.

Parsons, known online as "Kane Pixels," is part of a new wave of young filmmakers who built their audiences on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram before ever stepping onto a studio lot. His film, distributed by A24 and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, is already getting a sequel.

He's not alone. Cole Barker, 26, from Mobile, Alabama, made a horror film for $800 called "Milk & Serial" after a year of film school. A production company called Tea Shop Productions saw his short "The Chair" and financed his feature "Obsession" for $750,000. Focus Features bought it at the Toronto International Film Festival for $15 million. It's expected to pass $300 million in ticket sales.

Markiplier, real name Mark Fischbach, 36, has 38 million YouTube subscribers from his gaming videos. He wrote, edited, and self-distributed his directorial debut "Iron Lung," a sci-fi horror film based on a 2022 video game. Made for under $5 million, it grossed over $50 million.

David Firstman, 34, from New Jersey, broke through with pandemic-era skits on Instagram Live. He co-starred in the 2025 HBO series "I Love LA" and worked on "Big Mouth." His directorial debut "Club Kid" premiered at Cannes in May 2026, and A24 bought it for $17 million after a bidding war.

Then there's Jay Clark, from Virginia, who has posted horror shorts on YouTube for eight years. He's now turning his most popular one, "Portrait of God," into a feature film with Jordan Peele and Sam Raimi producing. Lionsgate and Blumhouse also tapped him to direct a new "The Blair Witch Project."

Eric Evenson, who goes by Grimoire Horror on YouTube, directed a 12-minute short called "Mora" in 2014 that got nearly 5 million views. In April 2026, Neon announced he will direct a feature adaptation. Evenson has visual effects credits on "Dune: Part Two" and "The Last of Us." "Mora" is about an artist searching for a bloody, malformed woman appearing in AI-generated images.

Warner Bros. co-chair Mike De Luca explained the appeal at a conference last month: "These filmmakers are in a dialogue with their audience from the word 'Go.' Their subscribers have direct input in each iteration of these things. By the time you get to the movie, they've had a billion test screenings."

This path isn't completely new. Issa Rae and Bo Burnham both started on YouTube. But the scale is different now. Hollywood executives are actively scouring platforms for the next Steven Spielberg, and they're finding young creators who already know how to go viral and keep audiences hooked. For Filipino audiences used to seeing vloggers become stars, this shift from screen to big screen feels familiar — but now the stakes are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.