Curry Barker, a 26-year-old YouTuber-turned-filmmaker, made his horror film \u201cObsession\u201d in just 20 days on a mere $750,000 budget.<\/p>\n
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Now, after its second weekend in theaters, the Focus Features-distributed movie is on track to earn more than 100 times that amount, with an expected $79.7 million haul at the global box office, according to Box Office Mojo<\/a>, which tracks global theatrical totals. Of that projected total, $58.5 million came from North American theaters. (Focus Features is a unit of NBC News\u2019 parent corporation, Comcast.) <\/p>\n It\u2019s a feat that even horror film genre heavyweight Jason Blum, who was an executive producer on the film, said is rare. \u201cObsession is the ONLY wide-release horror film on record to grow in its second weekend at this scale \u2014 $22.4M, up 30% over opening,\u201d Blum wrote Sunday on X<\/a>. \u201cThis doesn\u2019t happen in horror.\u201d<\/p>\n The movie is the latest project from a YouTuber to surpass industry expectations. \u201cIron Lung\u201d \u2014 a self-financed indie video game adaptation from Mark Fischbach, better known online as Markiplier \u2014 became a major box office success following its February rollout, helping renew interest in indie projects from online creators. \u201cBackrooms,\u201d an A24 movie from 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons, is also looking at a big opening weekend<\/a>. <\/p>\n For Barker, the robust theatrical turnout for \u201cObsession\u201d marks another chapter in his wild, fairytale-esque Hollywood story. <\/p>\n Before the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September, Barker was primarily known on YouTube, where he built an audience with projects like \u201cMilk and Serial<\/a>,\u201d a thriller that follows a duo of YouTube pranksters. <\/p>\n After \u201cObsession\u201d made its festival debut, studios were so blown away by him that they entered a bidding war<\/a> for the project, with Focus ultimately acquiring it for $15 million. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen we made \u2018Obsession,\u2019 we had no idea what was going to happen,\u201d Barker said in a video interview last week. \u201cAs the leader of the ship, I had to tell the people: \u2018This is going to be huge. You guys have to give this a year, because it\u2019s going to be something special.\u2019 But that\u2019s just because that\u2019s my job, to champion the movie. Really, I had no idea. … It was insane when we even just got into TIFF.\u201d<\/p>\n The movie, which stars Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette, is a romance-horror that plays on the idea that people should be careful about what \u2014 or who, in this case \u2014 they wish for. On the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes<\/a>, the film has amassed a 95% fresh \u201cTomatometer\u201d score from critics and a 94% hot \u201cPopcornmeter\u201d score from audiences. <\/p>\n Asked why he thinks YouTubers are getting more recognition in Hollywood, Barker said he believes filmmakers and producers are \u201cwisening up\u201d about sharing and discovering content on the Google-owned video platform. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re finally getting to the point where people are like, OK, fine, I\u2019ll put my film on YouTube,\u201d he said. \u201cVersus when I was in film school, that was kind of like a last resort. People didn\u2019t want to put their stuff on YouTube. They wanted to go the festival route. I was like, screw it. You know, just put it on YouTube and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a bet that clearly paid off, with Hollywood already putting a lot of trust in Barker for his future endeavors. He has another film, titled \u201cAnything But Ghosts,\u201d in the works, and A24 recently tapped him to helm a reimagining of \u201cThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe opportunities that I have right now are pretty insane,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I\u2019m just trying to keep my head down and focus on what\u2019s important to me, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Curry Barker, a 26-year-old YouTuber-turned-filmmaker, made his horror film \u201cObsession\u201d in just 20 days on a mere $750,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-694010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}