“Obsession’s” origin story is the stuff of legend.
On Sept. 7, 2025, just two days after its rapturously received premiere in the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), distributor Focus Features offered to acquire its rights for $14-$15 million. The film, about a friendzoned record store employee named Bear (Michael Johnston) who forces the object of his desire, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), to fall madly — and I do mean madly — in love with him via a mystical toy, was released the following May, where it became a cultural phenomenon, grossing over $500 million worldwide (against a $750,000 budget) and vaulting its 26-year-old writer-director, Curry Barker, and star Inde Navarrette, 25, to the top of the Hollywood A-list. Barker subsequently signed an eight-figure deal with Universal and Blumhouse, who helped shepherd “Obsession,” for his third feature, while Navarrette was cast as Rogue in Marvel’s “X-Men” reboot.
A little over a year after its world premiere, on Friday, Sept. 11, Barker and Navarrette returned to TIFF, the place where their lives changed, for a discussion titled “DIALOGUES The ‘Obsession’ Obsession with Curry Barker & Inde Navarrette” at the John Bassett Theatre as part of its inaugural industry-focused hub TIFF: The Market. And to say it was a hot ticket would be an understatement: An hour before showtime, the line for the talk snaked all the way down and around the halls of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre housing the theater.
