One year after Obsession premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, Curry Barker is revealing how close the film came to never playing in a theater at all. Speaking with Tom Power on CBC’s Q, the writer-director said Netflix put in an offer to take the movie straight to streaming.
Barker recalled waking up the morning after the film’s 2025 TIFF Midnight Madness premiere to missed calls from his manager, agent, and financier. A bidding war had broken out overnight. Neon, Focus Features, and A24 all wanted the movie, but Netflix’s pitch was different.
“They put in an offer to just put it straight on Netflix,” Barker said.
Focus Features ended up winning the film for around $15 million, a staggering figure for a movie Barker says cost roughly $600,000 to $700,000 to make. The Playlist and World of Reel both have the details from the interview.
The theatrical gamble paid off beyond anyone’s imagination. Released on May 15, 2026, Obsession opened to $17.2 million, then pulled off the near-impossible: it grew in its second weekend, jumping 39 percent as word of mouth took hold. The film has since grossed more than $505 million worldwide, becoming the highest grossing release in Focus Features history and one of the highest grossing horror films ever made. As TDN reported, the run turned star Inde Navarrette into the year’s biggest breakout.
Imagine the year’s great word-of-mouth phenomenon arriving as just another tile on a streaming homepage. No midnight crowd energy, no weeks of sold-out shows, no slow build from a $17 million opening into a half-billion-dollar cultural moment. That is the version of events Netflix was pitching.
Barker also revealed he came remarkably close to making a feature version of his viral short The Chair as his debut instead of Obsession. His next move is already lined up at Focus: Violet McGraw is set to star in his follow-up, Anything But Ghosts, as TDN reported in April.
Navarrette’s year keeps building on the film’s theatrical success. She will host Saturday Night Live‘s Halloween episode on October 31, as TDN reported earlier this month, and she has an open invitation to play Nikki at Halloween Horror Nights. She also picked up IMDb’s Breakout STARmeter Award at this year’s TIFF, which TDN covered from the festival. The film has been streaming on Peacock since July 17.
You can watch Barker’s full interview on CBC’s Q for the whole story of the bidding war, and what almost happened instead.
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