There’s news about when Obsession will be available on digital streaming platforms, for purchase or rental, after its theatrical run. Early reports said it would be tomorrow, June 2, but now fans will have to wait longer. Potentially a lot longer.
To that I say, good. This is good news.
When is the Obsession digital streaming release date?
NBCU has removed Obsession from the digital release schedule, and it does not yet have a new date. It is good news to me that Blumhouse very clearly understands that moving Obsession to digital this early would be an enormous mistake, and yes, I do believe people should drag themselves to theaters to see it instead of watching on their couches. Obsession is one half of a wild box-office story over the past few weeks; the other is the absolutely enormous success of Backrooms this weekend, which earned over $100 million globally and broke all sorts of records.
Obsession, too, is breaking records, and even more impressive ones. For the third weekend in a row, Obsession increased its box office earnings by another significant percentage, even competing with the aforementioned Backrooms in the same genre space, and the second week of the first Star Wars movie in seven years, The Mandalorian and Grogu, which is shoved down to an embarrassing third place.
Obsession/The Mandalorian and Grogu
Blumhouse, Disney
Lower-budget, lower-earning horror movies do have a habit of sprinting to digital rather quickly, especially in the Blumhouse family. But higher-earning movies can extend to a month in theaters, and the more “standard” window is 45 days from theater to streaming in 2026. A month/five weekends and a standard Tuesday release would be June 16 for an Obsession digital release. 45 days would instead be June 30. Given that we are in the third weekend with the numbers still going up, something that has almost never happened in film history, it stands to reason that yes, Blumhouse is probably going to want to give it another four weeks or so from here.
It seems unlikely that somehow, Obsession would increase its earnings in its fourth weekend, but Obsession is doing many unlikely things, so who knows. Obsession has already earned $148 million globally, which is…148x its million-dollar budget, and analysts expect it to hit at least $200 million, if not $250 million or more, making it one of the highest profitability ratios ever. Backrooms has its own string of broken records, and it stands to reason that next week it may have a far lower drop than most other movies, even if no, it’s not going to pull an Obsession and increase over a $100 million opening weekend. I mean, there are limits.
It’s an incredible time for movies, and we’ll see how the industry might change significantly based on what it’s learned from these two movies.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.