Every producer, studio and distribution exec, every indie filmmaker staring at Monday morning numbers will be obsessing over the 30% INCREASE Obsession posted in its second weekend.
Horror movies hardly ever go that direction (like NEVER). The genre’s natural expression is to front-load opening weekend and drop 50% in frame two — a 30% DECREASE would be a home run.
And while everyone is going to spend the week piecing together what Focus, Blumhouse, Curry Barker and his producing partner James Harris did to get there, the more interesting story is how this success differs from another recent creator-to-theatrical win — Markiplier’s Iron Lung. Two wins, two opposite paths.
But let’s first hit the broad strokes on how Obsession came together — how a $650,000 movie ended up on 2,615 screens in the first place. The backstory, Blinkist-style:
Curry Barker moved to LA at 18, started making YouTube videos, uploaded an $800 found-footage movie for free, it went viral, and connected him to produce…
