Obsession cost $750,000 to make. It has grossed more than $500 million worldwide — a budget-to-box-office multiple of roughly 674x, one of the largest in modern film history. By the math most people use to think about success, that should have made a lot of people rich.
It didn't work out that way for everyone. The film's art director says she was paid $6,741, after taxes, for 20 days of work. One of its three producers is now suing, alleging she was promised a third of the film's "net profits" and then locked out of the accounting that would show what that share is actually worth.
Both things are true at once. And the reason has less to do with how much money Obsession made than with a distinction buried in its contracts: the gap between what a movie earns and the much narrower, contractually defined pool of money its backers agreed to share.
The Numbers, Up Front
Here's what's established. Obsession was written, directed, and edited by Curry Barker, a 26-year-old who broke through on YouTube, and was shot in Los Angeles for a reported $750,000. Focus Features acquired it out of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival — some reports put the price at $14 million, while others, in coverage tied to the current lawsuit, cite $16.2 million. The lower of those two figures has been cited elsewhere as the highest price paid for a genre film in the festival's history. The movie went on to gross somewhere around $505 million to $510 million worldwide, depending on which tally you're reading and when it was taken.
Art director Sally Choi has said publicly that she earned $300 a day for 20 days of work, or $6,741 after taxes — a flat, upfront day rate with no backend participation, a compensation structure widely described as standard practice for below-the-line crew on micro-budget productions. It's the lowest documented payout discussed in the public record, though the film's complete payroll isn't public. Producer Leonora Ann Darby says she was paid a $300,000 bonus out of the film's initial minimum guarantee, and separately alleges she's owed a third of Tea Shop Productions' net profits on the film under a 2024 agreement — a claim now the subject of active litigation. And according to a trade report sourced to unnamed individuals, Blumhouse's Jason Blum, who joined the project as an executive producer after Focus had already acquired it, negotiated a box-office bonus that reportedly nets his company somewhere around $17 million. That figure hasn't been independently confirmed elsewhere; Blumhouse Atomic declined to comment on it.
Those three numbers — $6,741, a disputed and still-unknown share, and a reported eight-figure sum — all came out of the same movie.
Why a $500 Million Movie Isn't a $500 Million Pot of Money
The instinct is to treat "worldwide box office" as the number that matters. It isn't, and this is where most coverage of Obsession's success quietly skips a step.
Box-office gross is what audiences paid at the register. It doesn't belong to the studio, let alone to the people who made the film. As a general rule across the theatrical industry — not a disclosed figure specific to this film — exhibitors typically retain something close to half of ticket revenue, with the rest flowing back to the distributor. From there, the distributor — Focus Features domestically, Universal Pictures International in most of the rest of the world — recoups its own costs: the money it paid to acquire the film, whatever it spent marketing it, and a distribution fee on top. Only after all of that is anything left that could plausibly be called "profit," and even then, "profit" isn't a single number — it's whatever a specific contract defines it to be.
That contractual definition is often spelled out through something called a collection account management agreement, or CAMA — an agreement that can govern how a film's revenues are allocated among the parties with a contractual stake in it, and who gets to see the underlying books. Terms vary by deal, and the specific CAMA terms governing Obsession itself haven't been publicly disclosed. Not everyone attached to a film has a claim on that account at all. Most below-the-line crew members, like Choi, are paid a flat fee up front and have no stake in it, win or lose. Some producers and executives negotiate their way into a piece of it, either as a percentage of "net profits" — however that's defined in their specific deal — or as a bonus tied to box-office milestones that pays out automatically, without needing to touch the CAMA at all.
That distinction turns out to matter for at least two of the people connected to Obsession.
Two Very Different Kinds of Deal
Jason Blum's reported arrangement is the second kind: a box-office bonus, not a profit share. According to the trade report describing it, Blumhouse Atomic was set to collect $2 million once the film crossed $25 million domestically, plus roughly $500,000 for every additional $5 million after that — a structure that, if the reporting is accurate, would explain a payout in the neighborhood of $17 million as Obsession's domestic total climbed into the hundreds of millions. That kind of deal doesn't depend on anyone's definition of "net profits." It triggers on a number anyone can look up: how much the movie made at the box office. It's simple, and it's self-executing. Blum also joined the project after Focus had already acquired it, meaning his reported compensation structure was negotiated after the original acquisition risk had already been taken on by others.
Leonora Ann Darby's alleged arrangement is the first kind, and it's a much harder thing to collect on. Her lawsuit, filed August 28 in Los Angeles Superior Court against Tea Shop Productions and its co-founders James Harris and Mark Lane, alleges a 2024 agreement entitling her to one-third of Tea Shop's net profits on films she lead-produced, along with direct participation in the CAMA that would let her actually see how those profits were calculated. According to the complaint, Darby performed that role on Obsession — stepping in, she alleges, after director Curry Barker temporarily lost control of the film's edit, pushing for reshoots, and helping shepherd the film to its Toronto premiere — despite being formally credited only as an executive producer.
Darby alleges Tea Shop paid her $300,000 out of the film's minimum guarantee after Focus's acquisition; the complaint says the company has characterized that payment as compensation for her producing work rather than a buyout of her profit rights. Her lawsuit further alleges that once the money started coming in, her access to the collection-account information that would show Tea Shop's actual net profits was revoked — that Mark Lane told her future compensation on the film would be decided "where we feel appropriate," and that later proposals to restructure her role at the company would have written her out of Obsession's profits entirely. According to press coverage of the case, Tea Shop has taken the position that Darby has "no legal entitlement" to its financial records.
No court has ruled on any of this. What the lawsuit does establish, regardless of how it's ultimately decided, is that a promised percentage of "net profits" is only as good as your ability to verify the number it's a percentage of — access to the accounting isn't what creates the underlying right, but it's essential to determining and enforcing what that right is actually worth.
What the Public Record Can and Can't Tell You
Here's the honest limit of this story: nobody outside Tea Shop Productions has disclosed what its actual net profits on Obsession are. That number — the one Darby's claim depends on — has never been made public, and there's no requirement that it should be. Tea Shop is a private company. Focus Features and Universal haven't disclosed what they retained after distribution costs and marketing spend. One anonymously sourced trade report puts Capstone Pictures, the film's financier, on track to earn somewhere between $45 million and $50 million, which it would reportedly share with Barker and the creative team — but that figure hasn't been independently confirmed, and Capstone couldn't be reached to address it.
So the math that's easy to do — $750,000 budget, roughly $505 million gross, a 674x budget-to-box-office multiple — isn't the math that determines who gets paid what. That determination lives inside a set of contracts nobody outside a handful of lawyers and executives has read in full, governed by a definition of "profit" a lawsuit is now trying to force into the open.
This article can explain why the $500 million headline number doesn't tell you who actually got paid. It cannot tell you, from the public record alone, exactly where that money went — and that gap is itself part of the story.
What We Know
- Obsession's production budget was reported at $750,000.
- It was acquired by Focus Features for a price reported as either $14 million or $16.2 million, depending on the source, and has grossed roughly $505 million to $510 million worldwide.
- Sally Choi has said she was paid $6,741 for 20 days of work.
- Leonora Ann Darby has filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit alleging she was promised a third of Tea Shop's net profits on the film and was cut out once it became valuable.
- Jason Blum's box-office bonus arrangement, structured to pay out automatically as the film crossed certain domestic thresholds, is reported — based on anonymous sourcing — to total around $17 million.
What We Don't Know
Tea Shop Productions' actual net-profits figure on Obsession — the number at the center of the lawsuit — has never been publicly disclosed. Neither Focus Features nor Universal has released what they retained from the film's gross after distribution costs. The exact final acquisition price remains unresolved between sources. The Blum and Capstone figures rest on single, anonymously sourced trade reporting rather than confirmed documents. And no court has yet ruled on whether Darby's claim has merit.
The Money Verdict
The public record shows that box-office gross and participant compensation are governed by different contractual arrangements. The available evidence shows different structures producing different economic outcomes: a fixed day rate that doesn't move no matter how big the film gets, a box-office bonus that pays out automatically once a number is hit, and a promised share of "net profits" that depends on accounting neither the public, nor — Darby alleges — she herself was allowed to fully see. What the number $505 million actually represents, and who was entitled to how much of it, are two different questions. The public record answers the first clearly enough, even allowing for the small variance in the reported gross figure itself. It cannot yet answer the second.
Sources / Methodology
- Los Angeles Times — “‘Obsession’ executive producer sues over her cut of the profits” — reporting on Leonora Ann Darby's lawsuit, the $750,000 reported production budget, the Focus acquisition, the alleged one-third net-profit participation, and Tea Shop's response.
- TheWrap — “‘Obsession’ Producer Claims She Was Shut Out of Profits in Breach-of-Contract Suit” — reporting based on the complaint and related statements concerning Darby's alleged producing role, compensation agreement and collection-account participation.
- TheWrap — “‘Obsession’ Payout: Jason Blum to Make $17 Million on Indie Horror Hit” — anonymously sourced reporting on Blumhouse Atomic's reported box-office bonus structure and the reported Capstone economics.
- TheWrap — “‘Obsession’ Becomes Hollywood’s First Original Film of 2020s to Gross $500 Million Worldwide” — reporting on the film crossing the $500 million worldwide box-office mark and its record-setting performance.
- Box Office Mojo — Obsession — box-office totals and theatrical performance data used to cross-check the film's reported worldwide gross.
- The Numbers — Obsession (2026) — independent box-office and financial-data cross-check.
- Inc. — “An ‘Obsession’ Crew Member Is Furious Over Her $6,741 Payday” — reporting on art director Sally Choi's publicly described compensation.
- Universal Pictures Home Entertainment — Obsession press release — official Universal material confirming the film's release and its record-setting theatrical run.
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