<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unremarkable for a movie to get a standing ovation at a film festival. But it is unusual for the crowd to chant a director\u2019s name before the film even starts. That was the scene buyers encountered Sept. 5 inside the Royal Alexandra Theatre as Curry Barker unveiled his horror feature Obsession<\/em> for the Toronto crowd.<\/p>\n Baker, 25, has spent the past few years amassing a fan base on YouTube with his sketch comedy channel That\u2019s a Bad Idea and his $800 found-foot- age serial killer feature Milk & Serial<\/em>.<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Obsession<\/em>, from producers James Harris and Haley Johnson, stars Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette in a \u201cThe Monkey\u2019s Paw\u201d-style tale about a young man who wishes for his friend to fall in love with him \u2014 to disastrous consequences.<\/p>\n After the Obsession <\/em>premiere, the writer-director and his team spent the next 24 hours in meetings with potential buyers, ending at about 1 a.m. Sunday by selecting Focus Features, which beat out A24 and Neon. Part of the appeal of Focus, home to Nosferatu<\/em>\u2019s Robert Eggers, was its global distribution apparatus (Neon and A24 only distribute in North America).<\/p>\n The deal, negotiated by CAA and financier Capstone on behalf of the film, has not yet closed, but sources estimate it will easily reach the low to mid-teens and could go higher than $15 million. That\u2019s a head-turning sum for the project, which cost less than $1 million to make, and will easily top A24\u2019s high-seven-figure deal for the Sundance horror sensation Talk<\/em> to Me<\/em> from fellow YouTubers Danny and Michael Philippou. (Though that deal did not include international rights.) It also elevates Barker to in-demand horror filmmaker.<\/p>\n While Barker is the big winner of Toronto, the runners- up might be Jason Blum, Weapons<\/em> producer Roy Lee and Paranormal Activity<\/em> producer Steven Schneider.<\/p>\n Just days before Toronto, the trio placed a bet on the young filmmaker and preemptively purchased his follow-up, the script for Anything but Ghosts<\/em>, which he will direct and star in. They \u2014 along with partners on the movie Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath at Divide\/Conquer \u2014 now have a hot young filmmaker in their stable.<\/p>\n For Barker, announcing the deal with three of Hollywood\u2019s great horror producers surely helped drive anticipation for Obsession<\/em> and drove Focus and other buyers to mark it as a must-watch out of the festival.<\/p>\n Blum was on hand for the Toronto screening and was likely among the happiest in the room as the credits rolled and the cheering began. As for Barker, an Alabama native who moved to Los Angeles just a few years ago, other projects in his back pocket include The Chair<\/em>, a potential feature- length version of a mind-bending, 25-minute short he put on YouTube two years ago. The filmmaker is repped by Underground, UTA and Yorn Levine.<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s unremarkable for a movie to get a standing ovation at a film festival. But it is unusual for the crowd to chant a director\u2019s name before the film even starts. That was the scene buyers encountered Sept. 5 inside the Royal Alexandra Theatre as Curry Barker unveiled his horror feature Obsession for the Toronto […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2012165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[368197,317163,368201,34395,368200,368198,124567,368199,357776,313218,23844],"class_list":["post-2012164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-curry-barker","tag-film-festival","tag-haley-johnson","tag-hollywood-reporter","tag-inde-navarrette","tag-michael-johnston","tag-robert-eggers","tag-royal-alexandra-theatre","tag-standing-ovation","tag-toronto","tag-youtube"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/A-Year-Ago-He-Was-Making-800-YouTube-Movies-Now.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2012164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2012164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2012165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2012164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2012164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2012164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}