A24 reverses copyright strikes on Backrooms fan art, disavows ownership of the yellow wallpaper

A24 has issued a public statement walking back automated copyright claims filed against Backrooms fan art and community creations, after director Kane Parsons promised to investigate the takedowns. The statement arrived on July 17 via Instagram, two days after Parsons responded to a Reddit post from a creator whose wallpaper pattern had been pulled from Redbubble.

In the statement, A24 confirmed it became aware of an automated claim submitted to Redbubble on behalf of A24 and the Backrooms movie, and immediately began reversing it and reinstating affected listings. The studio was explicit: it makes no claim of ownership over the yellow wallpaper, the original post referencing it, or any community works built around it. Parsons, for his part, had already told fans on Reddit and his Discord that the Redbubble takedowns were likely caused by internal confusion, poor communication, and a third-party system error. Other takedowns on different platforms, he said, were seemingly coincidences and bad timing — not evidence of A24 going on a broader copyright spree. One indie developer had seen their Backrooms-inspired game pulled from the Google Play Store amid the chaos.

The Backrooms started as a single creepypasta post — a photo of an unsettling, fluorescent-lit office space — and grew into one of the internet's most prolific collaborative horror mythologies, spawning countless fan games, videos, and art pieces before Parsons, who first gained attention with his own Backrooms short film on YouTube, was tapped by A24 to bring it to the big screen. That origin story makes the community's anxiety over copyright claims especially pointed: the entire franchise is built on open, decentralized creativity, and any move toward locking it down would cut against the grain of what made it popular in the first place. The film earned $375 million against a $10 million budget, making it a genuine box office success.

With A24's statement out and the reinstatement process underway, the immediate crisis appears resolved. Both the studio and Parsons have now gone on record affirming the community's right to keep creating — which should give fan artists, game developers, and liminal-space enthusiasts some reassurance that the yellow wallpaper remains fair game.