The horror flick Obsession continues to impress with an even higher box office forecast as we head toward its weekend release. Directed by Curry Barker, who some will know from his success on his YouTube channel “that’s a bad idea,” the film follows Baron “Bear” Bailey (Michael Johnston) who wishes that his co-worker and childhood friend Nikki Freeman (Inde Navarrette) would fall in love with him. For months, Obsession has been riding a wave of strong word-of-mouth. The Focus Features and Blumhouse Productions movie received recognition at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2025, and in a show of confidence, the film earned high review scores several months before its May 15 debut in US theaters. Its current box office predictions are notably remarkable given its shoestring budget.
How much is Obsession expected to earn in its domestic opener?
In one of its last box office forecasts, Obsession is predicted to bring in $11 million, or in the range of $9.5 million to $14.5 million, in its domestic opening weekend from May 15 to May 17.
This latest projection is based on a weekend report from BoxOfficeTheory on May 13 that says the film “continues to trend well in pre-release models” that are “outpacing the likes of Undertone and Hokum.” Back when the site started to track Obsession, it was only expected to earn $7 million, or somewhere between $5 million to $15 million, while a separate April report from BoxOffice Pro had it earning much less from $4 million to $6 million. But the momentum for the film has grown steadily since then.
We previously wrote in late April that Obsession was already looking like a box office success given that its production budget was only $1 million, per The Hollywood Reporter, which is a shockingly low number for a wide release. But a May 11 featurette from The New Yorker reveals that the film had an even lower budget than that at a mere $750,000, according to Barker himself. He divulged that Focus Features bought the film for $15 million after it showed at TIFF, which he says is “the moment my life changed.”
If we take this new number and follow the general rule that wide-release movies need to earn 2.5 times its budget to be profitable, Obsession only needs to cross the $1.8 million mark to break even. Of course, Focus Features will be expecting much more than that given the price the distributor paid for the film. Still, this would mean that the film is expected to make many times what it needs to make in just its domestic opener, without factoring in its potential international haul; if we do, its worldwide total will likely blow its budget out of the water.
Better yet, the horror film doesn’t have too much competition in its debut week. Guy Ritchie’s In The Grey and the revenge flick Is God Is are projected to release on the same day with lower box office domestic totals. Its main showdown will be with Michael, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and Mortal Kombat 2, three blockbusters that are still holding up well. In the two weeks following its release, Obsession will need to contend with two horror films, Paramount Pictures’ Passenger and A24’s Backrooms.
As of May 14, Obsession has an impressive 95% critics rating from Rotten Tomatoes based on 110 reviews. But unlike many movies that have a review embargo that’s a few days or a week before their release, the film allowed many critics to share their scores in March. This led to a early score of 97%, which Forbes says would make Obsession the best-reviewed wide-release movie of 2026 so far. That may not hold as more reviews come in, as it has dropped a few percentage points since then, but its high scores are still fantastic.
Obsession almost received an NC-17 rating due to a particularly violent scene that had to be toned down.
