In a narrative more likely to have been excitedly retold and forwarded many 1000’s of instances amongst budding filmmakers over the previous couple of weeks, earlier than he made “Obsession,” Curry Barker was doing his factor on YouTube, the place in 2023 his 22-minute horror brief “The Chair” was noticed by LA-based Brit producer James Harris.
Impressed by what he noticed, Harris confirmed “The Chair” to his fellow Brits operating Tea Shop Productions, co-founder Mark Lane (based mostly within the U.Ok) and Leonara Darby, one other expat in LA who first joined the corporate as an assistant however was quickly elevated to producer.
“It’s such an incredible short in terms of its cinematic appeal,” says Harris, noting that Barker was in a position to make one thing for a small sum of money that, not like many different YouTube filmmakers, didn’t “feel like it was shot on an iPhone in someone’s house” and had a definite Hollywood aesthetic. “And it just felt to us, that, okay, here is a person who, if you can translate whatever he did for a few $1,000 and give him more money, which isn’t a lot of money for a film but is a lot of money for him, you can scale him up.”
That scale-up has now turn into the stuff of just about Hollywood legend.
From a price range of $750,000, Barker made his debut horror characteristic “Obsession,” one of many largest phenomenons of 2026 that continues to smash data. After three weeks of successive field workplace hikes (the primary non-festive huge launch since “E.T.” to take action and beating “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” within the course of), and a mere 7% drop within the fourth, the movie now sits at an astonishing $224 million worldwide, making it essentially the most profitable launch of all time for Focus Options, who purchased the movie for $15 million following main buzz in Toronto final yr. Coupled with “Backrooms,” “Obsession” has helped flip the business on its head in lower than a month.
Regardless of having lived in LA for over a decade, Lane gives a distinctly British response to his firm being behind one in one of many shock breakaway hits of the yr.
“I would love to pretend there was some sort of amazing secret to it,” he says. “And look, we all saw potential in the project. But I’d be lying if anyone could foreshadow the phenomena of people seeing the movie six times, or people making memes about it, or people reading into stuff in the movie that honestly I don’t think anybody should be reading into.”
Harris went to see “Backrooms” final week and “really enjoyed it,” however says essentially the most eye-opening factor was that the cinema “was like an event full of sub-30-year-olds who were almost rediscovering what it’s like to go to the cinema,” he says. “It was wild.”
For Tea Store — first launched in 2010 — “Obsession” has turn into by far its largest title so far from the greater than 40 it has produced. The movie has lengthy surpassed 2017’s “47 Meters Down,” its Mandy Moore-led shark thriller from director Johannes Roberts, which marked a turning level for the corporate after it was saved from a straight-to-DVD launch on the eleventh hour to make a shock $62.5 million on the field workplace, spawning a franchise. There’s one other franchise in Scott Mann’s vertigo-inducing survival thriller “Fall,” which grew to become a pandemic hit for Lionsgate and now has two sequels within the works (the primary gearing up for launch in September and the second now in submit).
However “Obsession” isn’t going to dramatically shift how Tea Store works, outdoors the studio system with a concentrate on good style storytelling from daring up-and-coming filmmakers, lots of whom they’ve helped elevate within the course of. Harris is eager to spotlight administrators equivalent to Ruth Paxton, who made her debut with the horror “A Banquet,” Emmanuelle Picket, who shot a pre-“Anora” Mikey Madison in “All Souls,” and Jordan Downey, who did his second movie, the horror/thriller “The Cycle,” with them. Amongst its upcoming options is “The Grow Up,” the debut characteristic from Plum Stupple-Harris, who they first crossed paths with when he was working as a director’s assistant on final yr’s rom-com “Jingle Bell Heist.”
“Obsession” does, nonetheless, assist grease the wheels going ahead.
“We’re pretty happy with our operation and the projects we do, and we’re been pretty true to the type of material we like,” says Harris. “But ultimately, it’s just going to open more doors and make certain conversations easier. Success breeds success, so if agents start sending you projects with bigger talent attached, those projects become easier to make. Also, scripts are subjective, so having a successful movie means that people are now like; ‘maybe I should say yes to this.’”
A lot of widespread chatter over “Obsession” and “Backrooms” is over their influence on the business, and Lane says that a few of the greatest response they’ve obtained have been the way it’s “good for everyone, because it means it could happen to us as well.” As a result of, for all of the educated perception of a workforce of skilled producers who imagine they know what audiences wish to watch, there’s a “huge element of luck,” he acknowledges. “Which is why everyone is looking at us, going that could be me — that could be the next small film that we get off the ground.”
As Harris notes, thanks to those two movies, it’s little doubt a “wonderful time to be a YouTube creator,” and says he’s certain “every studio has just suddenly hired a 23-year-old to be an Instagram researcher.”
However he does gives an air of warning to those that would possibly get caught up in a possible gold rush and the attract of studio budgets.
“I’m sure a lot of YouTube filmmakers are going to now skip the ‘Obsession’ step and move on to $20 million studio movies,” he says. “And I think there’s a lot of merit in doing that step first and making something that says something about you, versus doing a franchise film that maybe you don’t nail, and and then you go back to the beginning again.”
Having nailed it, after which some, with “Obsession,” Barker has already shot his second characteristic, the supernatural horror “Anything But Ghosts” — starring Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard — for Blumhouse and is now plotting his third, which due to the previous couple of weeks, Harris say “I’m sure he’ll get a trillion dollars for.” After which there’s the potential of reteaming with Tea Store on a sequel to the smash hit that made his title.
“I’m sure there’ll be an ‘Obsession 2’ conversation sooner rather than later,” says Harris. “But let’s see when Curry is even available to make it, because I’m sure he’s having more meetings that he knows what to do with at this stage.”
