The ‘Backrooms’ Popcorn Bucket Is the Most Internet Thing to Ever Hit a Movie Theater
Few horror films arriving in 2026 carry as much cultural weight as ‘Backrooms’, and A24 clearly knows it. The studio has spent months building anticipation for the project in ways that feel perfectly matched to its online origins, and its latest promotional move may be the most inventive yet.
The film is directed by Kane Parsons and is rated R for language and some violent content and bloody images. Parsons first captured global attention through his eerie YouTube horror anthology, a glitchy found footage series that reimagined an internet urban legend into something hauntingly cinematic, accumulating over 190 million views and a rapidly expanding fanbase. His leap from bedroom creator to Hollywood director is one of the most remarkable stories in recent genre cinema, and the promotional ecosystem surrounding the film has leaned hard into that internet native spirit.
Regal Prop Shop and A24 have partnered on a ‘Backrooms’ popcorn bucket that fans can 3D print at home for free. The collectible container is a miniaturized version of the hazmat suited figure featured prominently in the film’s marketing, and the 3D print files are available at no cost through Regal’s media library. The design is detailed enough that fans have already been showing off painted versions online. The bucket is shaped to evoke the eerie yellow hazmat suit seen in promotional imagery for the film, with popcorn spilling from its back in a detail that makes the whole thing feel genuinely uncanny.
Anyone who prints the bucket at full scale and brings it to a Regal screening during opening weekend will receive a free small bag of popcorn. Regal is also running a sweepstakes giveaway for a pre printed and painted version of the bucket, which runs through June 1, 2026. The dual approach, rewarding makers who do the work themselves while also offering a chance to win one already finished, is a clever way to activate both the craft community and casual fans at the same time.
The film stars Academy Award nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, alongside Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell. Its story centers on a strange doorway that appears in the basement of a furniture showroom, and after a therapist’s patient goes missing into a dimension beyond reality, she is forced to enter the unknown to bring him back. The screenplay was written by Will Soodik, with James Wan, Shawn Levy, and Osgood Perkins among the producers.
Speaking at CCXP Mexico, Parsons offered some insight into the internal logic he built for the world, explaining in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that the space preys on the human brain’s ability to map and understand environments, and that going back the way you came will always take you back that way, but it just keeps going and going, which is where the confusion and the convolution grow from. That obsessive attention to the psychological rules of the space suggests the film will offer something more layered than standard horror fare.
At just 20 years old, Parsons is the youngest director in A24 history, and his anthological YouTube series debuted in 2022 before amassing over 190 million views. For a film born out of internet folklore and shaped by a creator who built his audience entirely online, a 3D printable popcorn bucket you construct yourself might be the most fitting piece of merchandise imaginable. Whether you plan to fire up the printer or simply show up for the ride, what does the ‘Backrooms’ hazmat bucket say to you about where movie marketing is headed?
