YouTube has the rights to the Oscars starting in 2029, but it may only be a matter of time until a YouTuber is on stage collecting an award for a theatrical film.
One of technology’s latest forays into the movie business comes in the form of YouTube creators having undisputed success at the traditional box-office at the same time some bigger budgeted projects, ahem “Star Wars,” falter.
Managers and agents are now looking for YouTube film talent while some producers say that YouTubers are learning skills on shoestring budgets that translate to features — mostly in the comedy and horror genres. Other dyed in the wool cineastes aren’t convinced.
YouTube filmmaker Curry Barker’s debut theatrical feature “Obsession” was booming in theaters last weekend. FilmMagic
YouTube filmmaker Curry Barker‘s debut theatrical feature “Obsession” was booming in theaters last weekend at the same time “The Mandalorian and Grogu” sputtered. Barker, 26, a film school dropout, had made his first movie for $800 in 2024, which debuted on YouTube. But over Memorial Day weekend, the latest “Star Wars” movie was meh while Barker’s first theatrical release, “Obsession,” jumped 39% in its second weekend of release and has made $60.7M domestically (plus a reported $21.2M internationally as it heads towards $100M+).
The film was made for a reported $750K to $1M budget.
But is the new YouTube trend artistically more than just the next incarnation of the “Saw,” “Paranormal Activity” or “The Blair Witch Project” franchises? “Obsession” has a 95% fresh rating from critics on RottenTomatoes and 94% from fans, while Barker just landed his own New Yorker profile. He’s repped by UTA and Underground Films & Management — but he also recently signed with the Lede Company for PR, which handles A-list clients like Rihanna, Will Smith, Reese Witherspoon and Charlize Theron. (Believe it or not, he has three publicists on Team Curry and none of them bothered to get back to us.)
Inde Navarrette landed her breakout role in “Obsession.” Courtesy of Focus Features
Said one top manager who has shepherded the careers of countless filmmakers: “We are tracking YouTube [creators] as a management company, and the agencies are too. We are very focused on getting into business with these people way and way earlier.”
Next weekend marks the debut of another YouTuber film that’s tracking even bigger than Barker’s. A24’s science-fiction horror film “Backrooms” by Kane Parsons, 20,(known to subscribers as Kane Pixels) is based on the filmmaker’s creepypasta viral horror shorts. (From the Oxford English Dictionary for the uninitiated, “creepypasta” is, “Fiction or other media containing elements of horror or the paranormal, typically posted online in the form of short narratives, often purporting to be true.”)
Preliminary tracking, according to Boxoffice Pro, has “Backrooms” looking like the biggest box office surprise of the year with an opening around $50M. So far, the trade publication for the film biz predicts the edgy movie could bring in between $45M and $55M, which may shift in the coming days. If those numbers hold, the opening tally would smash an A24 opening weekend record currently held by Alex Garland’s “Civil War” with $25.7M.
Not everyone’s convinced. One venerable film critic dismissed the new school of talent as “yo-yos” when we asked their opinion. But another critic, Elvis Mitchell — formerly of the New York Times who’s now on YouTube himself with an interview show — tells P6H, “I think they’re a new kind of personal filmmaking… it’s a way to bring new audiences into theaters and excite them about going there and about possibilities for the medium.” He compared the new crop of horror films to the scene once surrounding “Paranormal Activity” and “Blair Witch.”
Alabama native Barker moved to LA to attend film school, where he first met creative collaborator (and “Obsession” actor) Cooper Tomlinson. Before long, the duo dropped out, focusing on their own YouTube projects under the moniker “that’s a bad idea.” Tomlinson described their work on the platform as “our film school outside of film school.”
In 2024, with just $800 and four months to shoot, Barker wrote and directed the 62-minute “Milk & Serial,” which went viral, earning him enough notoriety to sign with UTA. “Obsession” went on to command the highest deal price for a genre film in the history of the Toronto International Film Festival, ultimately going to Universal’s Focus Features and Universal Pictures International for upwards of $15 million.
Even before the box office success of “Obsession” (the cheapest movie to be a hit since 2009’s “Paranormal Activity”) Focus had already acquired distribution for Barker’s next film, “Anything But Ghosts,” currently in post-production.
A24’s science-fiction horror film “Backrooms” by Kane Parsons is based on the filmmaker’s viral shorts. Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty Images for A24 Films
A source tells P6H that Focus was especially eager to re-team with Barker, since he can work efficiently with little time and money. “He’s able to do so many cuts of a scene so quickly because that’s bred with YouTube, growing up on micro-budgets,” said an insider of the film.
After “Anything But Ghosts,” Barker has signed to team with A24 for the 10th film in the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” series.
Barker and Parsons’ success comes on the heels of several prominent YouTubers who have set their sights on bigger screens – Danny and Michael Philippou, known online as RackaRacka, have become sought-after filmmakers following the success of their first two horror features, “Talk to Me” and “Bring Her Back.”
Curry Barker, Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston at the screening of “Obsession” at the Hollywood Legion Theater on May 11, 2026. Admedia Photo / SplashNews.com
Similarly, creator Markiplier’s “Iron Lung” earned over $50M at the box office this year, while Michael Shanks took his talents to the silver screen with 2025’s Alison Brie and Dave Franco-led “Together,” which grossed $34.5 million.
While the cost of attending sought-after film schools like USC and NYU continues to balloon, studios are increasingly seeking self-taught talent — not in spite of their YouTube education, but because of it.
Said a veteran film pro: “In a more analog time you used to have to beg, borrow, and steal to make a movie. You had to have a place to premiere it — be it Sundance or somewhere else. Now you can build content and build your own community, you can scrape together money and make your film, and then you can take it to a festival with support already baked in. For ‘Iron Lung,’ he just went to AMC and made a deal. That’s the beauty of the future in which every one has been disintermediated.”
Then again, “There’s a long history of 750K, brilliant genre films,” said an insider. “And for every one of them, there are 250 that are just awful.”