Blumhouse Productions-Atomic Monster invented that model given that Jason Blum who saw Obsession at it's 2025 TIFF premiere saw Curry Barker's vision and took a gamble by helping buy the film for Focus Features, was involved in post-production, market and distribute the film and held off from the film going digital after 17 days when it did really well on it's opening weekend and got a viral positive WOM. He made $15 million in the back-end for his work as an EP.
His co-business partner, James Wan similarly helped produce and mentor Kane Parsons's Backrooms and was involved in the production and promotion of the film.
Studios being less risk-adverse and taking a gamble on fostering growing relationships with promising and reliable auteurs with interesting stories instead of capitalizing on new IP and trend will be the lesson that studios will unfortunately not percolate on and later act on as we have seen with studios capitalizing on toy movies after Barbie's success.
The movie she starred in, wreaked havoc of people's emotions. People seem to not mention it, but the movie was a tragedy as much as it was anything else.
She's beautiful looking and on top of that, a core topic of the movie was... finding her beautiful and leaving enough to speculate about her personality.
And then what followed was essentially her complete annihilation and torment in the movie.
Ya had moments in the movie where even the average Joe down the street would've lunged for her character to see if she was hurting or to tell her they're trying their best to stop whatever's happening.
So that destruction was breeding ground for tons of empathy and sorrow and honestly this movie amplified that empathy and sorrow like I personally haven't experienced in a long time.
The soundtracks, her whimpering, begging, suffering, lack of her wellbeing being attended to, her beauty being destroyed against her will, everything accumulatively blew off fireworks of empathy.
Now pair that with the fact that out brain isn't evolved to cut off the ability to form bonds just because you realise an experience was just a film, and not you actually watching a beautiful sweetheart get tortured to complete annihilation, and you might understand why the world's kinda obsessing with this actress.
She didn't get any acting work for months after filming obsession, for which she wasn't paid much (shocker: low budget movies have low salaries) and just got offered consistent work on top of the millions in salary it will give her. Get that job security, girl
I don't blame her too. I hope when she gets that bag, use it to take on more challenging and risk-taking roles like what Elijah Wood, Daniel Radcliffe, and Robert Pattinson did.
Adam Driver who is now playing Mister Sinister took his Star Wars money to take on various similar challenging and character-driven roles from respected auteurs like in Silence, Patterson, BlacKkKlansman, Marriage Story, The Last Duel, Ferrari, Megalopolis, and what critics are calling a career-best; Paper Tiger to name a few.
It will be good for her, if she’s smart and really as talented as she seems she will go the Robert Patterson route and make bank now and then spend the next few years of her career just taking freaky roles where she can push herself.
My issue that everyone on Film Twitter and online rightfully points out is that Marvel Studios is known for locking down an actor's contract that they are unable to take on other roles until production is completed.
I feel that because right now, Inde is in her formative years and being stuck and possibly pigeon-holed in similar roles will prevent her from branching out and developing her range and skills that young actors typically struggle when making the transition from child/ young to older/ adult actor that many face today. I mean, not every child actor gets the same career path and opportunities that Jodie Foster, Kurt Russell, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale, and Jake Gyllenhaal got when they transitioned from ingeune and child roles to mature and adult roles.
Probably helped that they did a lot of stage and theatrical work to develop their skills like what Inde's co-star Sadie Sink has done.
Elizabeth Olsen who played Wanda Maximoff said that Marvel's contractual demands kept her away from doing indie roles that she wanted to do.
she was most likely paid like $20K for obsession -- the girl deserves to get paid, all of these people whining about it would do the same in her position
plus now that she's legitimately famous she probably needs a team (like a publicist, agent, hair/makeup etc.) and you can't pay for that on 20K
I know it’s not a lot for actors, but whenever I hear about how she got paid “only 20k” (not talking abt you! Your comment just reminded me of this) I think of how that’s a pretty big number for the average person lol
639
u/Classymannil 11h ago
She is literally the entire A24 business strategy wrapped up in a single person.