Backrooms director’s dad returns to old Facebook post asking for career help for his son as the movie hits #1 worldwide: ‘Thanks for the help. He figured it out!’

Director Kane Parsons is probably riding pretty high right now: At just 20 years old, his first feature film hit #1 in the world, tripled studio A24’s previous record, and even outperformed the latest Star Wars at the box office. But his dad, Michael Parsons, is also primed to take a victory lap or two of his own.

4 years ago in the Telltale Games Alumni FB group, Michael Parsons was asking if anyone had advice for helping his 15 year old son Kane achieve his dreams of being a filmmaker.Turned out alright.

— @stirpicus.bsky.social (@stirpicus.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-06-10T14:27:57.104Z

First shared by developer Eric Stirpe on Bluesky, Parsons the Elder was an employee of Telltale during the developer’s early-to-mid 2010s golden age, with technical art credits on the likes of Batman, Tales From the Borderlands, and Minecraft: Story Mode. In May 2021, Parsons posted to a Telltale alumni Facebook group, asking his colleagues if they had any advice for his son as a young filmmaker.

“My 15-year-old wants to be a film director,” Parsons wrote. “Do any of you creative folks know of people who would be good to talk to about the specifics of following this career path?” Parsons noted that his son was already a self-taught modeler, animator, and VFX artist⁠. Elsewhere in the thread, he said that he didn’t teach his son any of these skills himself, not wanting to interfere with his process or confidence.

About a year later, Parsons returned with his son’s first viral YouTube video in The Backrooms mythos. “Thanks for the help,” Parsons wrote. “He figured it out!” Former Telltale cinematics artist Thomas Tan (who was most recently credited in IOI’s 007: First Light) marveled at the crazy numbers and reach The Backrooms already had, while marketing specialist Shaun Finney assessed that the younger Parsons would “never go hungry working in film/TV.”

Michael Parsons took to the thread once more in recent days to celebrate the latest development in his son’s film career. “This seems like a good time to conclude this thread,” Parsons wrote, sharing a screenshot of an A24 tweet marking Backrooms as the top-grossing movie in the world.

For more Backrooms reading, you can check out PCG senior editor Chris Livingston’s review of it as a perfect double feature with Exit 8, while news writer Elie Gould praised its restraint in not overexplaining its mythos.