A24 reversed a wave of copyright takedown notices targeting fan-made “Backrooms” artwork Friday, following intervention from the film’s director, Kane Parsons, after online creators accused the studio of trying to claim ownership over internet folklore that predates its movie by years.
The dispute began when Reddit user GnarlyNet reported that A24 had filed a complaint against Redbubble over artwork recreating the pattern from a 2019 image widely credited as the origin of the Backrooms concept. Other creators, including an independent game studio that said it lost its Google Play developer account after three separate strikes, reported similar takedowns. Parsons responded directly on the subreddit, writing that he was looking into the matter and that it should not be happening.
A24 said the notices stemmed from an automated system meant to catch pirated copies of the film, not fan-created work tied to the broader online mythology. The studio said it moved immediately to reverse the claim and reinstate the affected listing, adding that it makes no claim of ownership over the yellow wallpaper imagery, the original post that spawned it, or any community works built around it since. A statement posted to the film’s account framed Backrooms as one piece of a far larger creative ecosystem that other artists have every right to build on.
The concept traces back to an anonymous 2019 post inviting others to share images that felt unsettling, illustrated by a photo of an abandoned Wisconsin furniture store bathed in yellow fluorescent light. Communities on Reddit and elsewhere spent years expanding that seed into an elaborate mythology of liminal spaces and hidden monsters, long before Parsons, then a teenager, began adapting it into a YouTube series in 2022. That series eventually became his feature directorial debut, which opened bigger than any other film in A24’s history and pushed the film’s box office past $370 million.
The episode exposes a tension increasingly common in Hollywood, where studios adapt crowd-built internet lore into commercial franchises while the originating communities retain no formal legal claim to the material. Warner Bros. may face a similar question soon: filmmakers Zach Cregger and Brian Duffield are developing a movie based on Siren Head, another creepypasta character with no single identifiable owner.
