Shawn Levy Wants to Mash Up ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Star Wars,’ and He Actually Has the Power to Try It
Few filmmakers in Hollywood right now have a foot planted as firmly in as many worlds as Shawn Levy. Known for helming crowd-pleasing blockbusters and shepherding genre-defining projects, the director has spent recent years building a reputation as one of the industry’s most versatile creative forces. With two of the biggest genre properties on the planet currently in his orbit, it was only a matter of time before someone asked the obvious question, and Levy had the most irresistible possible answer.
‘Backrooms,’ the A24 horror film directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, has become one of the year’s biggest surprise hits, earning over $118 million worldwide with an $81.4 million domestic gross. The film traces its roots to an internet-born creepypasta, exploring the concept of a never-ending expanse of dull, depressing rooms and hallways, and it stars Oscar-nominated actors Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. The film broke A24’s own opening record and made Parsons the youngest director to have a number-one film globally.
In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Levy turned heads when the conversation shifted from the box office battle between ‘Backrooms’ and the galaxy far, far away. Rather than treating the two properties as rivals, the filmmaker made clear he sees something far more exciting in their overlap. “I can’t help but be captivated by a ‘Backrooms’ x ‘Star Wars’ mashup, and luckily I’ve got a little involvement in both, so I’ll see what I can do,” Levy said.
Levy served as a producer on ‘Backrooms’ and recently wrapped production on ‘Star Wars: Starfighter,’ his upcoming directorial effort for Disney and Lucasfilm. The ensemble cast for ‘Starfighter’ includes Ryan Gosling, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, and Amy Adams, among others, with a theatrical release set for May 2027. The fact that Levy has genuine creative credits in both projects makes his crossover musing feel less like a fantasy and more like a genuine, if wildly complicated, conversation waiting to happen.
Of course, having these two worlds collide is much easier said than done, given that ‘Star Wars’ remains firmly under the control of The Walt Disney Company. Disney has historically been protective of its intellectual property, and the idea of the eerie, fluorescent-lit liminal spaces of ‘Backrooms’ bleeding into the ‘Star Wars’ universe would require an extraordinary alignment of corporate and creative interests. Shawn Levy and James Wan mentored Parsons on ‘Backrooms’ and produced the film through their respective 21 Laps Entertainment and Atomic Monster banners.
The ‘Backrooms’ film follows a mysterious doorway that emerges in the basement of a furniture showroom, pulling unsuspecting individuals into a seemingly infinite maze of eerily quiet rooms and challenging their grip on reality and survival. The aesthetic, built on liminal dread and the creeping anxiety of wrongness, is almost the tonal opposite of a classic ‘Star Wars’ adventure, which makes the crossover idea both absurd and genuinely fascinating in equal measure.
An audience demographic that skewed heavily young, with 88% of ‘Backrooms’ seats reportedly filled by people under 35, signals exactly the kind of internet-native fanbase that would lose its collective mind over such a collision. Whether Levy ever manages to make good on the tease remains to be seen, but the conversation alone has already sparked the imagination of fans online in the best possible way. Would you want to see the fluorescent horror of the ‘Backrooms’ somehow find its way into the ‘Star Wars’ universe, and if so, what would that even look like?
