If you caught me on CNN last Friday comparing the youth-driven phenomena of Obsession and Backrooms to the New Hollywood cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, yes, I’m about to double down.
No, I’m not sure if film professors will someday be teaching Backrooms the way they do Bonnie and Clyde and The Conversation, but I do think it’s clear that there’s something exciting happening with younger directors who got their start on YouTube, built an audience and then translated that audience to movie theaters on a level absolutely nobody saw coming. And I also think there’s a clear connection between these movies, the winter TV phenomenon of Heated Rivalry, this past weekend’s Toy Story 5, the seemingly inevitable huge box office for Minions & Monsters and the weeks of July we’ll spend arguing about Christopher Nolan movies. That connective tissue? Fandom.
To talk about how it all ties together, film critic Katie Walsh returns to the show to discuss the new ways fandoms are shaping the movie industry — shifting from niche online concerns to full-fledged phenomena that even the industry doesn’t expect. Katie and I talked about Heated Rivalry mania on the show back in February, and we check in on the hockey romance adaptations that have come in its wake, as well as how that show’s fully independent production model might actually be the thing more people will copy going forward.
We also touch on Obsession and Backrooms fever, and how directors Curry Barker and Kane Parsons may find new ways to navigate the sometimes overly intense world of fandom. Is it possible Nolan will soon have some real competition as a director whose name alone is enough to make his movie one of the most anticipated of the year?
Hear it all on today’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, and keep an eye out for more from me on Prestige Junkie After Party later this week, where I’ll be joined by a couple of special guests to talk about the surprising ways the worlds of tennis and movies overlap — and no, not just in Challengers.
