Curry Barker’s ‘Obsession 2’ Talks Haven’t Started, Producer Says

The first producer on the year’s biggest horror break is openly telling the trade press that no one is talking about “Obsession 2” yet. Tea Shop Productions’ James Harris, who helped turn Curry Barker’s microbudget debut into Focus Features’ most successful release of all time, told Variety that despite the film’s $224 million worldwide gross, there has been no formal conversation about a follow-up. “I’m sure there’ll be an ‘Obsession 2’ conversation sooner rather than later,” Harris said in James Harris’s full interview on Obsession’s record run. “But let’s see when Curry is even available to make it, because I’m sure he’s having more meetings that he knows what to do with at this stage.”

The exchange captures a Hollywood split-second in real time. A first-time feature director whose movie cost less than a suburban mortgage has become the only filmmaker every studio in town wants locked down. The producer who found him is publicly saying the only thing in the way is the man’s calendar.

A Sequel That Hasn’t Started Talking

Harris’s Variety sit-down, paired with his quotes to The Playlist, makes the situation plain. There are no Obsession 2 talks on the books at Tea Shop, at Focus Features, or at any of the producers’ offices, and the reason is not lack of interest. It is the most boring reason in Hollywood: a director who is already spoken for. “I would love to pretend there was some sort of amazing secret to it,” Harris told Variety when asked how the team picked the project out of a crowded indie horror slate. “And look, we all saw potential in the project. But I’d be lying if anyone could foreshadow the phenomena of people seeing the movie six times, or people making memes about it, or people reading into stuff in the movie that honestly I don’t think anybody should be reading into.”

That admission, that no one inside the production predicted the run, is now the spine of the story. The same producer who would have passed on the project if it had come with a self-help book is the one fielding the ‘is there a sequel?’ question. His answer, for now, is no. Fans have spent the weeks since release writing up wish lists and meme-casting the next One Wish Willow victim, and Barker himself has teased the possibility of a spinoff set in a different world to dodge the ‘logic headaches’ of a direct sequel. None of that has translated into a meeting.

The likely explanation is also the simplest. Harris already has the answer. He is waiting on Barker.

How a $750,000 Horror Became Focus Features’ Biggest Hit

Barker wrote, directed, and edited Obsession himself, a microbudget production shot in 26 days in the Los Angeles area starting in October 2024. He came out of YouTube, where his 2023 horror short “The Chair” caught the eye of Harris, who runs Tea Shop with co-founder Mark Lane out of LA and London. Harris brought the project to Focus Features, and Focus paid a reported $14 million at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025, the highest price ever commanded by a genre film in TIFF history. Other reporting put the deal at $15 million.

The film’s run since its US release has not behaved like a normal horror release. After three successive weekends of growth, the first non-festive wide release to do so since “E.T.” according to Variety, the film dropped just 7% in its fourth weekend. It overtook Disney’s “The Mandalorian & Grogu” at the domestic box office weeks after the Star Wars film opened, the kind of upset that has now spawned its own box office book. Backrooms and Obsession outselling a Star Wars movie tells that other side of the story.

Theatrical discovery is the rarer half of it. Harris told Variety he went to see A24’s “Backrooms,” the other low-budget horror breakout of the season, and walked out struck by the audience. “The cinema was like an event full of sub-30-year-olds who were almost rediscovering what it’s like to go to the cinema,” he said. “It was wild.”

The Slate Already Filling Barker’s Calendar

What stands between the Obsession producers and “Obsession 2” is a calendar that already has three other Barker-shaped projects in it. The first is A24’s Texas Chainsaw reimagining, a feature Barker is set to write and direct, billed by insiders as a fresh take on Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel’s 1974 horror classic. the Texas Chainsaw Massacre reimagining announcement also pairs the film with a separate Texas Chainsaw TV series from Barnstorm’s Glen Powell and Dan Cohen and director JT Mollner, the first time the franchise has run on parallel film and series tracks.

The second is “Anything But Ghosts,” his Focus Features follow-up now in post-production. Stars include Aaron Paul, Bryce Dallas Howard, Cooper Tomlinson, Violet McGraw, and Chris Reinacher, with Barker co-writing alongside Tomlinson and directing. Focus Features acquired distribution rights in March 2026. Barker has confirmed the film is set in the same fictional universe as Obsession, with a direct callback to Nikki’s ending baked into the script. Barker confirming Anything But Ghosts is in the same universe quotes the filmmaker describing a news-anchor reference in the new film to a triple homicide committed by a woman, an explicit tie to the Obsession finale.

The third is a not-yet-pitched original. The Hollywood Reporter reported a studio had attempted to lock Barker down with a preemptive, sight-unseen offer for his next original project, the kind of bet studios usually reserve for A-list package deals. Harris, for one, sees a bigger ceiling. “I’m sure he’ll get a trillion dollars for” the third feature, the producer quipped to Variety.

• A24’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: written and directed by Barker; production not yet dated; reimagining of the 1974 Hooper-Henkel film.
• Anything But Ghosts: Focus Features, Blumhouse, and Spooky Pictures; in post-production; 2027 release window.
• Untitled original: a $10 million preemptive offer per The Hollywood Reporter, not yet pitched.

A Cautionary Note for YouTube-to-Studio Hopefuls

The same Variety interview carried a more pointed second act. Harris, whose company has produced more than 40 films since 2010, used the moment to warn the next wave of internet-native horror filmmakers not to skip the cheap-and-strange phase that made Obsession work in the first place. “I’m sure a lot of YouTube filmmakers are going to now skip the ‘Obsession’ step and move on to $20 million studio movies,” he said. “And I think there’s a lot of merit in doing that step first and making something that says something about you, versus doing a franchise film that maybe you don’t nail, and then you go back to the beginning again.”

The warning lands because Tea Shop’s own history runs through the same path. The company was nearly a one-and-done shop after its 2017 shark film “47 Meters Down” was saved from a straight-to-DVD release at the eleventh hour and went on to make $62.5 million, spawning a franchise and two sequels in the works. The pattern of small-to-mid-budget genre bets paying off is, per the producer, the part of the trade schools now skip.

I would love to pretend there was some sort of amazing secret to it. And look, we all saw potential in the project. But I’d be lying if anyone could foreshadow the phenomena of people seeing the movie six times, or people making memes about it, or people reading into stuff in the movie that honestly I don’t think anybody should be reading into.

the indie horror box office surge breaking Hollywood’s IP trap tracks the wider pattern in the year to date.

Where the ‘Obsession’ World Goes Next

The most concrete answer to the sequel question may already be sitting in post-production. Barker’s confirmation that “Anything But Ghosts” is set in the same fictional universe as “Obsession” is the only thing resembling franchise scaffolding the filmmaker has actually approved. A direct sequel is one path. A spinoff that follows a different corner of the One Wish Willow mythology, as Barker has teased, is another. A hand-off to his longtime writing partner Cooper Tomlinson, with Barker staying on as a producer, is the third option industry observers keep flagging.

Harris is not the one making the call. He told Variety the conversation will happen sooner rather than later, a phrase the producer has now used in print twice in a week, but the timing is bound to what Barker can clear. “Anything But Ghosts” wraps a 2027 release. A24’s Chainsaw film is in pre-production. The preemptive $10 million original sits on a shelf.

For now, the strangest part of the Obsession story is not that no sequel talks have started. It is that the original film’s producer is publicly telling the trade press as much, and that the trade press is publishing the answer with the same calm it would use to report a delay on a TV spinoff. The next chapter is coming. The calendar is just not ready.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Obsession 2 actually happening?

Tea Shop Productions producer James Harris told Variety that no formal conversation has begun, though he expects one to start sooner rather than later once director Curry Barker frees up his calendar.

How much did the original Obsession cost to make?

Curry Barker wrote, directed, and edited Obsession on a production budget of $750,000, with the film shot in 26 days in the Los Angeles area starting in October 2024.

What is Curry Barker’s next movie?

His next theatrical release is “Anything But Ghosts,” a supernatural horror film starring Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard for Focus Features and Blumhouse, set in the same fictional universe as Obsession and currently in post-production toward a 2027 release.

How big was Obsession at the box office?

Per Variety, the film had crossed $224 million worldwide as of the producer interview in June 2026, with Focus Features acquiring distribution rights for a reported $14 million at TIFF the year before.

Who produced Obsession?

James Harris of Tea Shop Productions is the producer most often cited in the film’s run, alongside Tea Shop co-founder Mark Lane, with the company credited alongside Blumhouse Productions, Capstone Studios, and Under the Shell.