‘Obsession’ to become biggest movie ever with major box office milestone

Obsession has crossed $200 million globally to become Focus Features' biggest movie ever.

The surprise horror hit, which was directed by YouTuber turned filmmaker Curry Barker, was made independently with a largely unknown cast for just $750,000, and has become a box office success over the past few weeks.

As well as crossing $200m globally, Obsession also dropped just seven percent in its fourth weekend.

This means its $25.6m is a record for the best fourth weekend hold ever for a horror movie, and the top fourth weekend ever for the genre.

Both records were previously held by The Blair Witch Project, which dropped 9 percent in 1999, and pulled in $24.2m for its fourth weekend.

Obsession had already become the first film since Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extraterrestial in 1982 to increase in weekends two and three.

Focus Features acquired the movie at Toronto International Film Festival for around $15m.

Barker is in high demand, with his next feature for Focus, Anything But Ghosts, already filmed, while he's also signed on to direct A24's new The Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie.

Last month, according to The Hollywood Reporter, one studio had tried to make a $10 million offer for Barker's next original project without even seeing a script or proposal.

However, sources added that Blumhouse-Atomic Monster has a first-look deal with Universal, and the right of first negotiations for Barker's next film.

As it stands, there are no details available on Barker's next original movie, with no producers attached.

Horror icon James Wan, known for franchises like Saw, The Conjuring and Insidious, recently insisted the genre "keeps saving" the movie industry, following the success of Obsession and YouTuber Kane Parsons' Backrooms.

Speaking at the Produced By Conference at Universal Studios, he said: “I’ve been a horror fan since I was a kid, and so naturally I grew up on a steady diet of horror movies through the ’80s and ’90s, inspired by great filmmakers like John Carpenter and Wes Craven.”

"I look at them and think, ‘You know what? I kind of want to do what they did.’ Today we kind of mimic that model. And here we are. I say this to anyone who will listen: The horror genre keeps saving our industry,” Wan mentioned as he spoke of how the horror genre is important to the entertainment industry.