Obsession is Focus Features' highest grossing title ever.
Curry Barker's horror phenomenon is launching a wide Oscar campaign.
Focus will also be gunning for Inde Navarrette's Best Actress Oscar race.
Focus Features is going bad with Obsession, its highest-grossing title to date. A huge Oscar campaign is on the cards. Curry Barker's horror hit dominated most of the conversation this year and turned its lead star Inde Navarrette a major force to reckon with. Variety reported that Focus is launching a campaign for 15 of the Academy Award categories. It's ambitious, but perhaps close in spirit to a film that unexpectedly took over the world. Focus is aiming to bring Navarrette onto Best Actress consideration.
Inside Obsession's Oscar Campaign
Among the other categories Focus plans to campaign for include a Best Actor nomination for co-lead Michael Johnston and Best Supporting nominations for Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter; nominations for Cinematography (Taylor Clemons), Original Score (Rock Burwell), Casting (Skyler Zurn), Costume Design (Blair James), Sound (YJ Gold with Ben Zarai), Makeup and Hairstyling (Allie Shehorn), and Production Design (Vivian Gray). Of course, a Best Picture nomination is the cherry on the top.
Navarrette’s placement in the lead actress category rather than supporting is a striking strategic choice, since studios sometimes go for a “lesser” category if they believe an actor has better odds there. Given how key her performance is to the film’s success, though, campaigning her as a lead might be the more natural fit despite the tougher competition that lead category inevitably attracts.
The only uncertain thing is which category Focus will pursue for the film at the Golden Globes: Best Motion Picture – Drama or Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. The quandary echoes what Zach Cregger’s Weapons and Jordan Peele’s 2017 horror film Get Out confronted, with the latter landing in the Musical or Comedy category.
Obsession already became the highest-grossing original film of the decade, pulling in more than $505 million worldwide on a production budget of just $750,000.
