Low-Budget Horror Film on Track for $79.7 Million Global Box Office

A 26-year-old filmmaker completed the horror movie Obsession in 20 days for $750,000. After its second weekend in theaters, the Focus Features release is projected to reach $79.7 million worldwide. Of that total, $58.5 million is expected from North American theaters, according to Box Office Mojo data cited in the report. Focus Features is a unit of Comcast, the parent company of NBC News.

The film posted $22.4 million in its second weekend, a 30 percent increase from its opening. An executive producer on the project stated that no other wide-release horror film has shown comparable growth at this scale. The movie stars Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette in a romance-horror story centered on the consequences of wishing for a specific person.

The project first screened at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Focus Features acquired distribution rights for $15 million after a bidding process. The filmmaker had previously built an audience on YouTube with projects such as Milk and Serial. He said in a video interview that he had no prior certainty the film would reach this level of success.

Other projects from online creators have also performed strongly. A self-financed video-game adaptation by Mark Fischbach reached wide audiences earlier this year, and a film by 20-year-old Kane Parsons is scheduled for release soon. The filmmaker has another project, Anything But Ghosts, in development and has been selected to direct a reimagining of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.