Hideo Kojima has told Backrooms Director Kane Parsons to take control of his future projects, in a conversation published by Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu.
The interview went live on September 22nd to celebrate the Japanese box office run of Backrooms, the horror film Parsons directed for US film studio A24. The film opened in Japan on September 4th, and Kojima joined Parsons on stage at its opening event. All quotes below have been translated from Japanese.
Parsons, who is 21, is better known online as Kane Pixels. He began posting videos about the Backrooms, an internet legend about a maze of empty yellow rooms, to YouTube at the age of 16. According to Famitsu, the series had passed 276m views as of September. The feature film, produced by A24 and Chernin Entertainment, opened at number one in 48 countries. Kojima's is also working with A24 for the adaptation of Death Stranding.
Kojima's warning about success
Kojima said he had been "a little concerned" about how big the film had become. He compared it with the original Metal Gear, which he made at 23. That game launched on home computers aimed at hardcore fans, so its success grew slowly. With a Backrooms sequel already announced, Kojima said people and money would start piling onto Parsons.
Parsons agreed. He said some people in the industry now saw the film as a high-value, profitable product, and that handling those relationships would be hard. He added that the first film's budget would be enough for the next one, and that he hoped to keep out people pushing for a bigger budget and more staff. He also praised the Vancouver team he worked with on the film. Kojima closed the interview with advice from someone who had already gone independent. "There will be difficulties, and you may not necessarily make money, but … you should produce your own creative work yourself," he said.
Parsons said releasing work on YouTube alone already gave him a sense of peace, so anything he made outside the platform had to be worth doing. He added that he didn't want to call his work a product, as that sounded too corporate.
The interview was published shortly after Kojima Productions lost Sony's funding for PHYSINT, an action-espionage game seen by many as a spiritual successor to Metal Gear. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), the company behind PlayStation, pulled out in June without giving Kojima a reason. Xbox, which was already funding the studio's horror game OD, took on the project, and the move was announced earlier this month. Kojima said no staff were let go, and he gave updates on both games at the Xbox TGS 2026 Showcase on September 17th.
A film built like a game
Kojima admitted he was sceptical when the film was announced. He wasn't sure how a series of YouTube videos could carry a feature-length story. The film's setup changed his mind. It follows a furniture store manager who lives inside his empty shop, and a counsellor who goes looking for it.
He also said the sound design felt closer to a video game than a film. Parsons explained that he and the film's sound designer broke the score into small pieces and used it like sound effects. The music changes based on how close the viewer is to its source.
The Backrooms spaces in the film were physical sets, not CGI. Parsons said they were torn down the day after filming, though he joked that he still planned to take home the large entrance to the Threshold. Kojima said the sets could have been turned into a theme park.
Parsons first came across Kojima's work at around age six, when he played as Snake in a Metal Gear crossover in the 2008 game LittleBigPlanet. "No wonder I'm getting old," Kojima joked.
