At this rate, “Obsession” will remain in the box office top five until July—or, who knows, even August—refusing to go down. It’s a word-of-mouth beast. I’m starting to believe in a $500M worldwide tally for this $750K-costing film, especially with international markets starting to catch the fever as well.
Curry Barker’s film grossed an impressive $4.2M on Monday, good enough for first place, ahead of “Scary Movie 6” ($4.1M), “Backrooms” ($3.2M), and “Masters of the Universe” ($2.1M), the latter of which is in for a steep drop next weekend. So far, the “Obsession” tally sits at $156M domestically, matching where “The Mandalorian and Grogu” currently stands. It will surpass it today.
There’s also pushback against some trades claiming yesterday that “Obsession” has become the biggest festival acquisition ever at the global box office ($229M), surpassing Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” ($222.4M), which was acquired out of Cannes. That is totally false.
What these reports completely overlooked is a little film called “The Blair Witch Project,” acquired out of Sundance 1999 by Artisan for just over $1M, which ultimately went on to gross about $248M worldwide. At this pace, “Obsession” is projected to pass ‘Blair Witch’ before the week ends.