Inde Navarette in “Obsession.”
Focus Features
Focus Features is giving Curry Barker’s Obsession, starring Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston, a longer-than-normal theatrical-to-digital streaming window following the film’s blistering success at the box office.
Written and directed by Barker, Obsession opened in theaters on May 15. In the film, the lovelorn Bear (Johnston) uses a novelty item, the One Wish Willow, to wish his music store co-worker and secret crush Nikki (Navarrette) would love him more than anyone in the world. Bear’s wish surprisingly comes true, and before too long, Nikki becomes dangerously obsessed with him, leading to deadly unintended consequences.
Barker, the YouTube filmmaker behind the web sketches That’s a Bad Idea (along with Obsession star Cooper Tomlinson), as well as the horror film Milk & Serial featured on the platform, reportedly made Obsession for a shockingly low (by Hollywood standards) $750,000. Produced by Blumhouse, the film was scooped up by Focus Features for distribution for around $15 million at the 2025 Toronto Film Festival, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Focus’ investment has clearly paid off, considering the film opened with $17.1 million in its opening weekend, domestically, followed by an unprecedented 39% increase in its second weekend box office for a May 22-24 take of $23.9 million. Business continued to boom for Obsession from May 29-31, when the film earned another $27.3 million at the box office, up 14% from the previous weekend’s take.
As of Tuesday, Obsession has earned $105.7 million domestically and $4.8 million internationally for a worldwide box office tally of $150.5 million — and there’s no indication of the horror thriller anytime soon.
Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston in “Obsession.”
Focus Features
‘Obsession’ Was Reportedly Scheduled For A June 2 Digital Streaming Release
Because of the film’s monster reception by the audience, Focus Features, not surprisingly, is breaking with its standard 17-day theatrical-to-digital streaming window for Obsession, according to World of Reel. The publication reported that Focus Features originally had the film scheduled for a June 2 release on digital streaming via premium video on demand.
The intended release date makes sense, given that the specialty feature arm of Universal Pictures has implemented the 17-day PVOD release pattern for many of its titles in the past couple of years. Among the studio’s films released on PVOD after 17 days in theaters are Michelle Dockery’s Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, Aubrey Plaza and Margaret Qualley’s Honey Don’t! and Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson’s Song Sung Blue.
While changes have been afoot by Universal Pictures with the studio’s theatrical-to-PVOD window since March, the digital release strategy for Focus has largely remained the same. In March, Universal extended its theatrical-to-PVOD window for all of its titles from as little as 17 days — M3GAN 2.0 and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 followed the pattern in 2025— to five weekends in theaters (or 30 to 31 days) before its films arrive on PVOD (which is typically on Tuesdays).
Massive hits like Universal’s The Super Mario Galaxy are given a bigger theatrical-to-PVOD window, of course, because of increased theatrical demand, so it didn’t appear on digital streaming until May 19, 49 days after its April 1 theatrical release.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s PVOD release is essentially a peek into Universal’s near future when it comes to streaming. At the time of Universal’s March announcement about the five-weekend theatrical-to-PVOD window, the studio noted that the release cycle would increase to 45 days in 2027, while Focus titles could still come out on PVOD in as little as 17 days after opening in theaters.
According to World of Reel, Obsession, despite being a Focus title, is expected to its parent studio’s future 45-day theatrical-to-PVOD window, which would put the digital release at somewhere around June 23.
However, since nobody really saw the Obsession storm coming, don’t be surprised if its digital release is pushed back even further if the indie horror sensation continues to over-perform.
If Obsession has proven anything in the past three weeks, its business pattern is anything but predictable. As such, the only way you can count on seeing the film now is in theaters.
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