Obsessed with Obsession: how a low-budget horror changed the game in Hollywood

The $750,000 relationship horror about a cursed wish is set to outgross a new Star Wars movie, energizing Gen Z audiences and creating a rare cultural conversation This week, the independently produced horror movie Obsession, which cost either $750,000 or $15m depending on whether you count its actual budget or acquisition cost for its studio, officially passed the latest Star Wars movie at the box office (the film has so far made over $165m in the US alone). It’s not a coincidence that this happened on a weekday. Obsession’s box office power lies not just in its astonishing weekend-to-weekend strength (including the virtually unheard-of trajectory of increasing grosses on its second and third weekends) but in its powerhouse weekday grosses. This past week, as it approached the one-month mark in theaters, it was averaging over $4m on its weekdays. At the same point in the run of Avengers: Endgame, that movie – the biggest summer blockbuster of modern times – was pulling in half as much. When all is said and done, Obsession will (probably) not make as much as Avengers: Endgame, though its return on investment is far more astronomical. But this intimate and occasionally gruesome horr