"Obsession," a horror film directed by the YouTube creator Curry Barker, took $19 million in its fifth weekend — a 25% drop, enough for second place — and has now grossed $188.3 million in North America and $265 million worldwide, the highest-grossing release in the history of its distributor, Focus Features [1]. It cost about $1 million to make. The same weekend, "Masters of the Universe," built on a roughly $200 million budget, fell 71% in its second outing to $8.6 million [1].
The paper's June 15 argument that margin math keeps cheap hits beating costly brand extensions gets its sharpest receipt yet. "Obsession" has had four consecutive weekends larger than its already-strong $17 million debut, the kind of word-of-mouth leg that no marketing budget can manufacture [1]. "Masters of the Universe," adapted from the 1980s Mattel toy and cartoon, has earned just $45.7 million domestically and $84 million worldwide against its near-$200 million cost, and Variety now calls it "one of the year's biggest bombs" [1].
It is not the only legacy property struggling. Disney's "Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu," made for $165 million, sits in sixth place with $4.7 million in its fourth weekend, a major theatrical dud [1]. Meanwhile a second YouTube-native filmmaker is rewriting records: Kane Parsons's "Backrooms," from A24, has reached $160 million domestically and $262 million worldwide, overtaking "Marty Supreme" as the studio's highest-grossing movie ever [1].
On X, the chart is an indictment. The discourse reads it as "IP slop is dead" and, in its blunter register, "go woke go broke" — proof that audiences have abandoned manufactured franchises. Box-office trackers logged the collapse as it happened, noting "Masters of the Universe" debuting behind both "Backrooms" and "Obsession," and forecasting the toy adaptation "tracking to bomb." The mainstream account is quieter and arithmetic: Variety reads the same numbers as marketing-and-margin math, where a $1 million horror film with strong holds simply outearns a nine-figure brand extension that never expanded beyond its core fans [1].
The paper's balance-sheet frame splits the difference, and it is the more durable read. Budget, multiple, and second-weekend hold decide who wins, not the rhetoric on either side. What the receipts show is not that audiences hate intellectual property — "Backrooms" is now a franchise in the making — but that YouTube-native creators are out-converting legacy toy IP on the only scoreboard that clears: the weekend gross against the cost to make it.
-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles