Obsession Earns $2.6M in Previews Before Opening Weekend

Obsession is arriving in theaters this weekend with serious momentum behind it — and the early numbers are backing up the hype. The romantic horror film from first-time big-screen director Curry Barker pulled in $2.6 million in previews spanning Thursday night through Wednesday shows, a figure that already puts it ahead of where Paramount’s Smile stood before that film opened to $22.6 million.

For a movie that cost $750,000 to make, that’s a pretty stunning place to be.

Barker — who built his following through his YouTube channel “that’s a bad idea” — made the film on a shoestring, then watched his life change overnight when Focus Features and Blumhouse picked it up for $15 million following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025. “That’s the moment my life changed,” Barker said in a recent New Yorker featurette. The film’s actual budget — which he confirmed at $750,000 — is even lower than the $1 million figure previously reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

The movie follows Baron “Bear” Bailey (Michael Johnston), a young man who comes across a trinket that grants him the ability to wish the girl of his dreams — his co-worker and childhood friend Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarrette) — into falling in love with him. As you’d expect, chaos follows. The film almost earned an NC-17 rating due to one particularly violent scene that had to be toned down before release.

It’s now booked at 2,542 locations, including 435 premium large-format screens — a wide release footprint that makes its microscopic budget feel almost absurd in context.

Critics and Audiences Are All In

Obsession is riding into the weekend with a 95% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 110 reviews, alongside a 96% audience score. What makes those numbers even more remarkable is the timeline: the film allowed critics to share scores as early as March, when it briefly hit 97% — which Forbes noted would make it the best-reviewed wide-release film of 2026 at that point. It’s dipped a few points since more reviews came in, but the reception has stayed overwhelmingly positive.

Its closest comps in the indie horror space are A24’s Heretic and Talk to Me, both of which opened to $1.2M in Friday previews before earning $10.8M and $10.4M respectively in their opening weekends. Obsession has already cleared both of those preview marks.

Current box office projections put the film at around $11 million for its opening weekend domestically, with a range of $9.5M to $14.5M according to BoxOfficeTheory — a significant jump from the $7M estimate when tracking first began, and miles ahead of an early BoxOffice Pro range of just $4M to $6M. Given its $750,000 budget, the film technically only needs to gross $1.8 million to break even on production costs alone, meaning this weekend’s haul will already be a massive win before a single international dollar is counted.

What It’s Up Against This Weekend

The bigger question heading into the weekend is whether Obsession can shake up a box office that was shaping up to be a two-horse race. Lionsgate’s Michael is heading into its fourth weekend, and 20th Century Studios’ Devil Wears Prada 2 is in its third — both were tracking north of $20 million each before Obsession’s preview numbers landed. New Line’s Mortal Kombat 2 is also still in the mix, though it’s expected to drop around 60% to roughly $15M.

Also opening this weekend are Guy Ritchie’s In the Grey — starring Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Eiza González as a covert ops team on a near-impossible heist mission — and Is God Is, the feature directorial debut of Aleshea Harris, adapted from her award-winning stage play and starring Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Janelle Monáe, and Sterling K. Brown. Is God Is is sitting at an extraordinary 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. Neither is expected to challenge Obsession’s numbers this weekend, but both are generating serious critical attention.

Looking further ahead, Obsession will face two horror releases in the coming weeks — Paramount’s Passenger and A24’s Backrooms — so this opening weekend matters. The town is clearly paying close attention to Barker: beyond Obsession, his follow-up film starring Aaron Paul has already landed at Focus Features, and he’s set to direct a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie for A24.

For now, though, all eyes are on this weekend. A $2.6M preview haul from a film that cost less than most music videos to produce is the kind of story Hollywood genuinely loves — and it’s only just getting started.