In absolute terms, Hollywood mega-hits such as the Avatar films, Frozen or Titanic made more money but with blockbuster budgets several hundred times the one available to Barker.<\/p>\n
Burgers to big screen<\/p>\n
The Alabama-born director\u2019s success at the box office has surpassed that of the other remarkable horror hit of the year – Backrooms by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, which has earned US$360m with a budget of around US$10m.<\/p>\n
Both films are in the top 10 highest-grossing movies of 2026, underlining the appetite for horror among young audiences and starting what is set to be a new trend – young social media creators moving into cinema.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re very encouraging for the future of cinema,\u201d Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan told AFP and other entertainment journalists last week in Paris.<\/p>\n
Barker moved from his hometown of Mobile to Los Angeles after finishing high school, initially studying film and hoping to make it as an actor.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, he was flipping burgers in LA, working at Starbucks, and taking whatever jobs he could find in the film or TV industry to make ends meet.<\/p>\n
The blonde-haired sunglasses collector scored a minor role in the series It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and took a position overseeing Covid safety protocols during the pandemic on another production.<\/p>\n
All the while, he and creative partner Cooper Tomlinson were trialling content online, mixing comedy sketches on TikTok and Instagram with horror shorts such as The Chair on their YouTube channel That\u2019s a Bad Idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn that journey, you figure out timing, you figure out tricks like how to get someone\u2019s attention in the first three seconds,\u201d Barker told The Big Picture podcast recently.<\/p>\n
Next projects<\/p>\n
The Obsession plot is a simple but original idea from Barker: a young man uses a lucky charm known as the \u201cOne Wish Willow\u201d to wish that his long-time friend and crush falls madly in love with him.<\/p>\n
The violent and unsettling consequences deliver enough scares to thrill even a hardened horror fan, while raising questions around toxic relationships, dating culture and consent.<\/p>\n
It was turned into a cash bonanza for Focus Features, part of Hollywood studio Universal, which bought the distribution rights for US$15m at the Toronto Film Festival.<\/p>\n
Barker has several new projects already in the pipeline: a second feature, Anything But Ghosts, in which he acts alongside Tomlinson; and directing a new version of the 1974 slasher classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot to weigh and that\u2019s where the stress really comes from. I don\u2019t know what to do next,\u201d he told the Hollywood Reporter.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In absolute terms, Hollywood mega-hits such as the Avatar films, Frozen or Titanic made more money but with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[264095,241262,6726,9719,264093,3936,156,80495,593,434,75699,71,1437,410,185,16748,1132,130,3025,435,111,139,69,6300,164276,5340,35446,9090,166476,12819,131,2044,22974,264094,102],"class_list":["post-535712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-684m","tag-barker","tag-become","tag-cinema","tag-curry","tag-director","tag-entertainment","tag-exploding","tag-film","tag-films","tag-firsttime","tag-from","tag-global","tag-horror","tag-is","tag-lowcost","tag-million","tag-more","tag-most","tag-movie","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-obsession","tag-piling","tag-profit","tag-profitable","tag-records","tag-revenues","tag-sensation","tag-than","tag-time","tag-track","tag-us400","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}