{"id":642297,"date":"2026-06-16T21:01:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T21:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/642297\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T21:01:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T21:01:24","slug":"curry-barker-breaks-silence-on-obsession-pay-debate-amid-6k-reveal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/642297\/","title":{"rendered":"Curry Barker breaks silence on Obsession pay debate amid $6k reveal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Curry Barker has responded to the now-viral post from Obsession art director Sally Choi, who <a href=\"https:\/\/thetab.com\/filmshrine\/2026\/06\/05\/obsessions-art-director-reveals-shocking-low-pay-and-shares-details-of-demanding-set-culture\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">revealed she was paid $6,741<\/a> while calling for change within the industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thetab.com\/filmshrine\/tag\/obsession\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Obsession<\/a> fever shows no signs of slowing down \u2013 the horror movie has had an unprecedented run at the box office, with multiple cinema-goers watching it 10+ times, ramping up its global total to $287million at the time of writing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This becomes even more impressive when you find out it was made on a <a href=\"https:\/\/thetab.com\/filmshrine\/2026\/06\/09\/the-pitt-actress-claims-inde-navarrette-lost-money-filming-obsession-after-20k-salary-rumours\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">shoestring budget of just $750,000<\/a>. That said, most of the earnings will go to the production companies and distributors rather than the creatives who made it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s something Sally Choi spoke about in an Instagram post on June 4th, saying she earned $300 a day as art director on the film and had to wear \u201cmany, many hats\u201d due to the low-budget production, leading to health problems.<\/p>\n<p>She noted that the issue was bigger than Curry and Obsession, and later <a href=\"https:\/\/thetab.com\/filmshrine\/2026\/06\/09\/obsession-art-director-sally-choi-doubles-down-after-slamming-low-pay-wages\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">doubled down in a follow-up post<\/a>, where she said she was speaking to a union. It\u2019s sparked a huge debate, with some arguing Sally blacklisted herself, while others have <a href=\"https:\/\/thetab.com\/filmshrine\/2026\/06\/12\/rick-and-morty-writer-slams-disappointing-response-to-obsession-art-director-pay-debate\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">commended her<\/a> for speaking up.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Addressing the viral Obsession pay debate<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/movies\/movie-features\/curry-barker-obsession-interview-1236620580\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> took the opportunity to ask Curry about the matter, noting that while he\u2019s not the person who wrote the checks, does he have any feelings about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have nothing but respect for the art department, and the work they did was extraordinary. Everybody on this film worked so hard and they deserve to be recognised,\u201d the filmmaker replied.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis movie was made for so little money that it\u2019s typical that the only people who [directly] benefit from its financial success are the people who took on some sort of risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Curry appears to be referring to the way <a href=\"https:\/\/thetab.com\/filmshrine\/2026\/06\/11\/obsession-is-making-one-person-a-lot-of-money-and-its-not-anyone-in-the-cast-or-crew\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">profits are typically distributed on indie films<\/a> \u2013 investors, producers, or creatives with ownership stakes can benefit from a movie\u2019s success, while crew members are paid a fixed rate regardless of how well the project performs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut what I hope is that every person that worked really hard on this film will see opportunities to catapult their careers in ways that can be very financially fruitful for them \u2013 like what\u2019s happening for me,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of which, Curry also spoke about potential opportunities for the next Obsession through feature-length adaptations of his <a href=\"https:\/\/thetab.com\/filmshrine\/tag\/horror\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">horror<\/a> shorts.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Chair could definitely be a horror film. I think eventually it would be cool to bring a feature version of the haunted chair story to life,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMilk and Serial [about a serial killer with a YouTube prank channel] is probably going to happen [as a film]. I wonder if there\u2019s an opportunity to bring somebody else onto Milk and Serial and I\u2019ll produce but not necessarily direct.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If that goes ahead, the filmmaker would have to pick someone who understands audiences in the same way he does \u2013 because by the sounds of things, Obsession could\u2019ve looked very different if he hadn\u2019t stood by his story.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen we were shopping this around, there were companies that told me they would give me $2 million if I just rewrote the script to make Bear a hero,\u201d he explained.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was like, \u2018I\u2019m not rewriting the script to make Bear a guy that does all the right things. It\u2019s so much more interesting that he doesn\u2019t do the right thing and instead tries to make [the relationship] work and he just keeps making bad decision after bad decision.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe movie would have been so boring if Bear was going on a journey to figure out the lore of the One Wish Willow. So I turned down more money to tell the story that I was more interested in telling.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For all the latest film and TV updates and hot takes, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FilmShrine\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">like our Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Featured image credit: Instagram\/@curry.barker\/Focus Features<\/p>\n<p>                                                &#13;<\/p>\n<p>\t\tPost navigation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Curry Barker has responded to the now-viral post from Obsession art director Sally Choi, who revealed she&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,2332,12663,555,14159,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-642297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-horror","tag-industry","tag-obsession","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}