Obsession He probably needed to make about $30 million to turn a profit. The independent horror film. It had a budget of about $750,000 and, after its premiere in Toronto International Film Festival Last year, Focus Features paid $14 million for the rights to distribute it. Then you estimate that about twice the cost of the film goes into marketing it. Thus, very approximately, once Obsession reach approximately 30 million dollars, It was something of a success.
That happened on the fourth day.
Since then, Curry Barker’s diabolical horror film Obsession has had a run at the box office for ages. While most movies typically make most of their money on opening weekend, Obsession saw its gross income increase over several weekends, something that hasn’t happened in a wide release in decades. And, in the weeks since, it has held up incredibly well not only against other independent horror films, such as Backroomsbut massive Hollywood productions like Toy Story 5, Supergirland Disclosure Day.
This weekend, that success continued as the film passed another milestone. During a very competitive 4th of July holiday weekend in the US, Obsession came in sixth place, raising $5.3 million. And that figure was enough for the film to surpass $400 million worldwide, $245 million domestically, and $157 million internationally.
When you look at hundreds of millions of dollars like this, the success of a movie, especially a horror movie, goes from eye-opening to downright historic. Because while Hollywood often makes movies that are so expensive that they feel like a failure at $400 million, a horror movie that makes that is something else. Especially when it costs less than a million dollars to manufacture.
To put it in a broader context, depending on how you classify what is or is not a horror movie, Obsession is now among the 15 highest-grossing horror films of all time (if you go by this list from Wikipedia) or in the top 10, if you are a little more selective (Is it beetle juice 2 really a horror movie? Come on.) And, no matter where he specifically stands, most of those who are undeniably above him:It, The Sixth Sense, World War Zetc.: they all cost much more to manufacture and market. That means Obsession It could very well be the most profitable horror movie of all time, without adjusting for inflation, of course. (Inflation changes things because something like Jawsfor example, it cost around $10 million and earned around $500 million 50 years ago. That’s more than a billion today.)
Can Obsession But crossing that next milestone? Can it reach 500 million dollars? with the movie recently coming to VOD and its physical release is scheduled for July 14, it is very unlikely. But, again, he only needed to earn about $30 million to be a success, and that figure vanished months ago. The world is obsessed, and rightly so.
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