The most successful filmmaker A24 has ever put in a theater is 20 years old, and he wants you to know exactly where he stands on artificial intelligence: nowhere near it.

Kane Parsons — the YouTube creator known online as Kane Pixels, whose viral "Backrooms" web series became A24's feature smash of the same name — torched generative AI in an interview with The Australian that ricocheted across the trades the first week of June. "If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would," Parsons said. He did not soften it from there.

'Backrooms' Director Kane Parsons Would 'Make Generative AI Disappear Forever' — and A24's Biggest Hit Ever Is His Receipt

"Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me," he told the paper, in comments first reported by Variety and Deadline on June 3. Parsons framed the technology as "less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot," and pointed at the world outside the multiplex — the billboards and signs he called "obvious AI slop" — as evidence the damage is already done.

The Numbers Behind the Mic Drop

Parsons can say it loudly because the receipts back him up. "Backrooms" opened to $81 million domestically and $118 million worldwide — the largest debut in A24's history, more than tripling the record once held by Alex Garland's "Civil War" ($25.5 million). Variety clocked it as the biggest start ever for an original horror movie, and Parsons as the youngest filmmaker ever to land a No. 1 film at the box office, beating a benchmark Josh Trank set at 27 with "Chronicle."

'Backrooms' Director Kane Parsons Would 'Make Generative AI Disappear Forever' — and A24's Biggest Hit Ever Is His Receipt

And he did it the hard way: "Backrooms" was co-financed by A24 and Chernin Entertainment for roughly $10 million, with Peter Chernin, James Wan, Shawn Levy and Jason Blum among its producers. Parsons built his liminal-space nightmares the same way he did as a teenager posting to YouTube — in Blender, by hand, with actual sets and a camera. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve star.

The Awkward Part for A24

The studio cashing those checks is the same one that drew fire in 2024 for using AI-generated promotional posters for "Civil War," and that has since stood up its own in-house AI division — a move that lit up fans who consider A24 the last artist-friendly major. Now its record-breaking wunderkind is the loudest anti-AI voice in the building. Parsons left one door open: he's interested in AI as a subject, "not using AI to make the art itself, but examining what it represents." As a tool on his set, though, he'd erase it tomorrow.