‘Obsession’ Is Rewriting Horror History and a $250M+ US Run Is Now the Floor
The story of ‘Obsession‘ is the kind of thing the film industry tells itself it wants but rarely actually makes room for. A YouTuber with a sketch comedy background writes, directs, and edits a supernatural horror film entirely on his own, shoots it in 20 days for a budget that would barely cover catering on a studio blockbuster, and then watches as the entire business scrambles to catch up with what he made.
‘Obsession’, the Curry Barker-directed horror phenomenon distributed by Focus Features, has been one of the defining theatrical stories of the year.
The numbers behind the film’s creation remain almost absurd to type out. Barker shot ‘Obsession’ in Los Angeles in October 2024 for $750,000, and after its debut in the Midnight Madness block at the Toronto International Film Festival, Focus Features acquired the global distribution rights for $14 to $15 million, the highest price commanded by a genre film in TIFF history. Jason Blum joined the project as executive producer after that premiere, and the film was released on May 15.
What happened next has been unprecedented. The film debuted to $17.2 million in its opening weekend, finishing third at the box office, then made $24 million over the second weekend in a 39 percent increase from its opening, marking the biggest second-weekend increase for a film playing in more than 2,500 theaters outside of the Christmas season. Records that had stood for decades began falling one by one.
Six weekends into its theatrical run, ‘Obsession’ is still showing extraordinary staying power. The film has crossed $215.8 million at the domestic box office, overtaking ‘It Chapter Two’s total US run to claim the title of the seventh-highest-grossing horror film in American theatrical history. That milestone arrived during a sixth weekend that itself broke records.
The film grossed $2.7 million on its sixth nationwide Tuesday discount day, the biggest such Tuesday for any horror film in history, posting a drop of just 30.3 percent from the prior Tuesday despite having already lost minimal theaters, now playing across 3,053 locations. It now carries a cumulative US total of $220.1 million, and analysts tracking the run are openly stating that $250 million is not a ceiling but a new floor.
For Focus Features, the studio that spent $15 million acquiring a film it did not make, the returns have been extraordinary. The film has become Focus Features’ highest-grossing release of all time worldwide, surpassing the studio’s previous record holder, ‘Downton Abbey’, which earned $194.6 million globally. It is a remarkable outcome for a specialty label that built its reputation on prestige drama, not supernatural horror romance.
The film’s reception has matched its commercial performance. On Rotten Tomatoes, ‘Obsession’ has amassed a 95 percent fresh Tomatometer score from critics and a 94 percent hot Popcornmeter score from audiences. That combination of critical approval and audience passion is exactly the engine that has kept its theatrical run alive week after week, with repeat viewers and word of mouth doing the work that no marketing campaign could replicate.
The film became the first movie since ‘E.T.: The Extraterrestrial’ in 1982 to increase in both its second and third weekends, an achievement that speaks not just to the quality of the film but to how it was discovered by audiences gradually rather than all at once.
NBCUniversal Entertainment chairman Donna Langley praised the filmmaker’s instincts, saying in a statement that “Curry Barker has an exceptional ability to tap into the cultural zeitgeist, pairing an innate instinct for what resonates with audiences with extraordinary filmmaking prowess.”
With a domestic projection of $250 million to $270 million now being openly discussed by industry analysts, and the film still holding in over 3,000 locations, the run is far from over. Have you seen ‘Obsession’, and do you think it can keep climbing toward the all-time horror record books? Let us know in the comments.
