Obsession Shatters Sinners’ Box Office Record: Made for Less Than 1% of the Cost!

The film Obsession has dramatically surpassed Sinners in box office earnings.

The 2026 horror film Obsession, directed by the young YouTube sensation Curry Barker, tells the story of Bear (played by Michael Johnston) who wishes for his love interest Nikki (portrayed by Inde Navarrette) to fall deeply in love with him. Despite a modest start with $17.2 million during its opening weekend in the U.S., the film quickly became a phenomenal success. Remarkably, it is the first movie since 1982 to increase its earnings over three consecutive weekends after its release, maintaining an exceptional hold on its audience by never seeing a weekly drop of more than 30%.

According to The Numbers, by June 28, Obsession had amassed a global total of $371.2 million after its seventh weekend, with $233.9 million from domestic markets and $137.3 million internationally. This achievement nudged it past the $370.3 million garnered by 2025’s Sinners, making it the top-grossing original live-action English-language film of the 2020s.

Sinners had previously claimed the record by surpassing Christopher Nolan’s 2020 sci-fi film Tenet, which had a global revenue of $365.3 million. While Tenet held the title for several years as the film industry recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, Sinners maintained the lead for only a year.

The only original films from the 2020s that have ranked higher than Obsession are Chinese films such as The Battle at Lake Changjin ($902.5 million), Hi, Mom ($822 million), Full River Red ($670.5 million), No More Bets ($532.6 million), The Eight Hundred ($461.4 million), Dead to Rights ($422.8 million), and Successor ($422.3 million), along with Pixar’s Elemental ($496.4 million) and Hoppers ($372 million), which Obsession is poised to outperform soon. Thus, Obsession stands as the tenth highest-grossing original film of the decade so far.

What makes the success of Obsession particularly noteworthy is its modest production budget of just $750,000. Although exact figures for marketing expenses by Focus Features in the U.S. and Universal internationally are not disclosed, the film has yielded an astonishing return on investment. In contrast, Sinners, with a production cost of $90 million, earned over four times its budget, marking it as a significant success. However, Obsession has far outpaced this, earning more than 494 times its production cost.

It’s still uncertain how much more Obsession will earn before the end of its theatrical run, but it’s clear it will significantly widen its lead over Sinners. The film has consistently ranked in the domestic top five for seven consecutive weekends, despite competition from several major new releases like The Mandalorian and Grogu, Scary Movie, Masters of the Universe, Disclosure Day, Backrooms, Toy Story 5, and Supergirl.

Moreover, Obsession has received stellar reviews, boasting matching 94% ratings on both Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer and Popcornmeter, along with a rare A- CinemaScore, which is particularly exceptional for a horror film.