Obsession cost $750,000 to make. Seven weeks after its wide release, it has crossed $400 million at the global box office.
According to Variety, the Focus Features release has earned approximately $245 million domestically and $157 million internationally. The film was acquired for approximately $14 million at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, per Variety. In hindsight, that price looks like one of the shrewder bets in recent distribution history.
Written and directed by Curry Barker, who built his initial following as a YouTube filmmaker, Obsession follows Bear (Michael Johnston), a hopeless romantic who makes a Faustian bargain to win the heart of his coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). The film opened in May 2026 to $17.2 million over its first weekend across 2,615 theaters. Then it grew. The Memorial Day frame brought $23.9 million, a 39.4 percent increase. "A second weekend jump nearing 40 percent is virtually unprecedented in the annals of modern box office tracking," Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore's chief box office analyst, told The Hollywood Reporter at the time.
The film holds a 94 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and has now surpassed every other Focus Features release in the studio's history. Barker, born in 1999, has already completed his next picture. According to Deadline, Anything But Ghosts, a horror comedy produced by Blumhouse and Atomic Monster for Focus Features, will star Aaron Paul, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Violet McGraw.
