Donna Langley has met with Curry Barker after Universal wooed him for his next movie. The move puts Curry Barker inside the same studio fight that has already pulled in other online-born horror filmmakers.
Universal is not chasing a finished franchise so much as a filmmaker with momentum. Studios have been throwing millions at Internet-fluent horror talent and online-native IP, and Barker now joins that market as another creator being priced as future supply rather than past performance.
Gen Z Horror Gets Bid
$374 million in global box office is why A24 is fighting hard to keep Kane Parsons close. Parsons’ Backrooms film became A24’s top-grossing movie ever, and the studio’s effort to hold him shows how quickly one breakout title can reset the value of a filmmaker with an audience built online.
Seven figures were enough for A24 to land Talk to Me at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, then keep the Philippou brothers in house for Bring Her Back in 2025. That sequence matters because it shows the playbook: buy young horror talent early, then try to lock in the next project before a bigger studio can do it first.
Universal Enters The Chase
By July 17, 2026, Langley had already met with Barker. That puts Universal in the same aggressive lane as the companies circling Parsons, and it signals that the bidding is not just about one movie but about securing a creator who can keep reaching Gen Z viewers without needing a legacy brand to do it.
Thursday brought another move in the Parsons race, when he took part in a Zoom with Casey Bloys and Francesca Orsi. In recent weeks, Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy also flew to his home in the Bay Area, and Warner Bros. has been pursuing a deal that would cover both film and TV.
Parsons And The Pressure
Parsons’ Backrooms IP began as YouTube shorts, and he fully owns it. That ownership gives him leverage most young filmmakers do not have, while A24 has already built a case for why it wants him to stay by asking for a first-look at a filmmaker’s second project in recent years; that does not appear to have been the arrangement with Parsons and Backrooms.
Universal’s meeting with Barker says the next move is likely to be a deal, not a wait-and-see gamble. If one studio is already in the room and another is trying to keep Parsons from leaving, the market is telling these filmmakers the same thing: the fastest path to leverage is still a horror breakout that travels online first and then cashes in at the studio level.
