How an indie horror film became a box-office ‘Obsession’
Curry Barker's indie horror film 'Obsession' has achieved remarkable box office success, earning 30% more in its second weekend than its opening. The film, made on a $750,000 budget, is projected to gross over $79 million globally. This success highlights a growing trend of YouTubers transitioning into successful filmmakers in Hollywood.
- ▪Curry Barker's film 'Obsession' was made in just 20 days on a budget of $750,000.
- ▪The movie is expected to earn over $79 million at the global box office, with $58.5 million from North America.
- ▪'Obsession' is the only wide-release horror film to grow in its second weekend at this scale, according to Jason Blum.
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| Original publisher | NBC News — Top |
| Canonical URL | https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/obsession-curry-barker-box-office-hit-focus-features-rcna346824 |
| Publication time | Mon, 25 May 2026 22:51:22 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-25T23:02:40.539Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-25T23:02:40.539Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | qg-PDDXbvpIq · 3 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Pop Culture NewsHow an indie horror film became a box-office ‘Obsession’YouTuber Curry Barker’s film pulled off a rare box office feat, earning 30% more in its second weekend in theaters than in its opening.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Inde Navarrette stars as Nikki and Michael Johnston as Bear in "Obsession."Focus FeaturesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleMay 25, 2026, 6:51 PM EDTBy Saba Hamedy and Greg RosensteinCurry Barker, a 26-year-old YouTuber-turned-filmmaker, made his horror film “Obsession” in just 20 days on a mere $750,000 budget.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Now, after its second weekend in theaters, the Focus Features-distributed movie is on track to earn more than 100 times that amount,…
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