Director Kane Parsons Plans Film Adaptation of Valve's Portal

Twenty‑year‑old filmmaker Kane Parsons, who directed the A24 horror feature Backrooms, told The New York Times that his next dream project is to bring Valve’s puzzle game Portal to the big screen. Parsons, who rose to fame creating the viral Backrooms series on YouTube, said he is actively exploring how a Portal movie could work and approaches the idea with “a lot of curiosity.”

He noted that past attempts to adapt Portal have been discussed by studios such as J.J. Abrams’s Bad Robot and director Dan Trachtenberg, but Parsons wants to focus on an original production rather than a franchise tie‑in. The director said his interest lies in staying true to his own creative vision rather than working within established series like Star Wars or Star Trek.

Parsons’s interest follows the success of his Backrooms adaptation, which featured Oscar‑nominated actors Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The filmmaker’s next step, if realized, would mark a rare example of a video‑game‑to‑film project led by a director whose reputation began online.