For Obsession writer-director Curry Barker, rolling out a follow-up to the biggest surprise breakout of the year is a pretty daunting task — especially given Barker cast himself in the film’s lead role.
But Seth Rogen says he’s actually seen Barker’s follow-up, Anything But Ghosts, which is released next year.
And The Studio creator claims the film is not only better than Obsession, but that Barker crushes his major feature film on-camera debut.
Writing for Time magazine’s Time 100 package, Rogen described the experience of watching Obsession for the first time in a theater, then added, “I’ve seen Curry’s next film, Anything But Ghosts—and for those of you who, like me, are uncomfortable with this amount of talent in a person so young, I have bad news … it’s even better, and, to add insult to injury, he’s just as good an actor as he is a director.”
Anything But Ghosts stars Barker and his producing partner and Obsession co-star Cooper Tomlinson as two fake paranormal investigators hired by a couple (Bryce Dallas Howard and Aaron Paul) who have a real haunted house. The film was written by Barker and Tomlinson and shot before Obsession was released. Like his hit debut, Ghosts will be distributed by Focus Features.
During Barker’s interview for The Hollywood Reporter‘s cover story on the director’s wild success in June, he was in the middle of editing Ghosts and expressed concern about comparing the film to the rather high bar set by Obsession. “If I’m worried, it’s comparing it to Obsession that’s hard,” he said.
“It’s a buddy comedy, but it’s still going to be scary and messed up,” he said. “You can’t not have these feelings when your first movie is breaking box office records and you’re in your room editing your next movie thinking, ‘Oh my god, did I take this beat from Obsession?’ Thank God I have people around me to ground me and tell me that Anything But Ghosts is good and different, and that’s OK. Nobody wants the same movie twice. So people can expect it to be very different than Obsession, but my voice will still be very strong in it.”
Ghosts had a production budget of $5 million — which is rather lavish when compared to the famously frugal $750,000 budget of Obsession. Obsession topped $500 million globally, and is in the awards conversation. It stands as the fifth highest-grossing horror movie of all time globally. The film will be released in May, 2027.