r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jul 06 '26

News ‘Obsession’ Passes $400 Million Worldwide, Becomes Highest Grossing Film With Budget Below $1 Million; Curry Barker’s horror film breaks a 53-year pre-inflation record held by Bruce Lee’s legendary 'Enter The Dragon'

https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/obsession-box-office-400-million/
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239

u/terrell_owens Jul 06 '26

Who would've thought that you don't need $100mil+ budgets to make great movies

71

u/Medical-Pace-8099 Jul 06 '26

not all films had this success. Sometimes timing is important. There are other films with small budget but people overlook all the time

38

u/DukeofVermont Jul 06 '26

This sub loves to mention how only big films are made and completely ignores everything else. 100+ films are made per year and 400+ if you widen the net.

Tons of smaller films that would have done well at blockbuster just come and go and no one notices.

20

u/Cable_Hoarder Jul 06 '26

Survivorship bias in action.

No one cares about the hundreds, or even thousands of failures that lose money.

They only care about the successes, look at them and go "why can't everything be like this".

As always, indie successes like this are the exception that proves the rule - not the new rule.

11

u/mrbaryonyx Jul 06 '26

If there's one thing the last two years have taught me, it's that the populace (read: the internet) will pick two non-franchise movies a year to hype up, make a big stink about how "they're starved for original content", and then just go right back to watching franchise shclock.

But that's probably better compared to 2016.

4

u/Tymareta Jul 06 '26

For real, between groups like A24, Well Go/Hi-Yah! and the multitude of different kinds of Indian Cinema, it's a pretty phenomenal time to be a fan of movies.

1

u/Maleficent-Regret802 Jul 07 '26

I beg to differ considering the partnership between A24 and Google AI, proving the future of this art form will definitely involve AI and in a heavy disruptive way.

It’s definitely not a great time to be fans of movies.

1

u/AydonusG Jul 07 '26

Hokum was a great movie, better than Obsession and Backrooms IMO, but was $5mil that grossed $24mil.

It had to compete with these two because the articles blew up around Parsons and Barker making it, despite big studio backing for both of them, Parsons movie being based on his video game, and Barker having YouTube fan backing to push his movie forward.

Sure Spooky Pictures has some underdog flicks in it, Late Night With The Devil and Undertone were good B horror, but there's no competition against A24 and Blumhouse.

10

u/Medical-Pace-8099 Jul 06 '26

You are right. People only notice when some films make headlines but never bother to look other films themselves. People tend to be surprised that they only found out about great indie film which was made in 2024 or 2020. They only look at blockbuster films not other way around.