Curry Barker, the director who went from serving coffee to fund his YouTube shorts to becoming a millionaire with his debut film

Until a few months ago, Curry Barker was a relatively unknown actor and a slightly better-known YouTuber. Now, at 26, the American performer has become one of the youngest and most acclaimed filmmakers of his generation after making his directorial debut with Obsession. The horror film was shot in 26 days, produced for $750,000 and, according to Variety, had already exceeded $400 million in worldwide box office sales by early July after two months in theaters. The film, about a wish granted with dramatic consequences, has unseated The Exorcist (1973) and become the seventh highest-grossing horror movie in history. The runaway success has allowed Barker to focus now on his next project, Anything But Ghosts, in which he will direct and also act.Barker moved from his native Alabama to Hollywood to pursue his dream. There he enrolled in a film school and specialized in acting, began auditioning, and landed brief appearances in several series. It was also where he met his friend, partner, and co-star in the film, Cooper Tomlinson. “I feel like people can stay in Alabama and accomplish this. For me, moving to L.A. kind of put me in a city where I felt like this was possible. The industry is all around you, and it’s contagious. It fuels you to drive past Warner Bros. every single day and wish I could go on the other side of that fence,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in June. “In Alabama, [Hollywood] feels so far away that it doesn’t seem real. If my parents weren’t so supportive, I don’t know if I would have had the guts to move out here,” he admitted.The two ambitious friends decided to leave school to start their channel, called That’s a Bad Idea, and upload comedy sketches and horror shorts to YouTube and TikTok. Their audience began to grow — they now have 1.5 million subscribers on each platform — but not enough to make a living, so Barker kept working at a coffee shop to pay rent and finance his shorts.His first success came in 2023 with his horror short Warning, which has 3.3 million views on YouTube. That was followed by The Chair, which with more than 11 million views was nominated for Best Film at the Los Angeles Short Film Festival and was a semifinalist at the Burbank International Film Festival. Both are available to watch for free on his channel. That latter short got him noticed in the film industry and drew the attention of independent production company Tea Shop Productions, which provided the budget needed to allow a 20-day shoot for Obsession.With a budget of $800, in 2024 he released his first feature, Milk & Serial, on YouTube. A year later, at 25, he premiered Obsession at the Toronto International Film Festival. Within days, independent studio Focus Features bought the film for $15 million. From there, everything took off. “I never thought of myself as a YouTuber. I feel my journey isn’t that much different from the greats we know and love like Spielberg — not to compare myself to those people, but they started by making short films. They made films over and over until finally someone gave them a chance,” he told the trade publication.The internet obsessed over Obsession: there are more than 50,000 TikTok posts discussing and analyzing the film frame by frame. On IMDb, about 273,000 people have given it an average rating of 7.9 and, weeks after its release, it ranks third among the most popular movies, behind The Odyssey and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. It also received praise from several well-known filmmakers, including Christopher Nolan. “When you go see a film like Obsession, that’s an amazing idea. That movie works like a motherfucker. It’s not about the technical side. [...] It’s about story,” said the director of The Odyssey (2026) in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.Barker says the film came to him while watching a special horror episode of The Simpsons that features a monkey’s paw that grants wishes with terrible consequences. Something similar happens in his project: the “One Wish Willow” is a small magical twig on which the plot is based. “I was thinking that I’ve never seen a straight crazy horror where… we’ve seen ‘Be careful what you wish for’ tons of times. But we’ve never seen my version of it. I instantly started thinking about what I could do with that,” he told Variety in September 2025.In the Tarantino vein, Barker also acts in his films in addition to directing, writing, and editing them. The young filmmaker has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which he says makes him obsess over one thing at a time. That may also be why he turned down a $2 million offer to change the script of Obsession. In his next film, Anything But Ghosts, which he is already editing, audiences will see him both directing and acting.Now a successful director, Barker has closed a deal to write, direct, and produce his version of the horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Also, according to The Hollywood Reporter, a company has offered him $10 million for any idea he wanted to present next. Looking ahead, he is considering turning Obsession into a series in which each installment presents a different wish.More and more centennial directors like Barker or Kane Parsons — his fellow 20-year-old YouTuber who directed the horror film Backrooms (2026) — are reaching the big screen. The promising director’s team, with whom he plans to keep working on future projects, are all aged under 35. This coincides with the fact that Generation Z, born between 1995 and 2009, now constitutes the largest demographic going to cinemas, according to a study by Fandango. “I wish they understood that we’re tired of slop. We want good movies back. People are still hungry for movies that are original without some big IP, as long as the story is good,” Barker said about major productions in his interview with The Hollywood Reporter.Although the young filmmaker is working on his next film with Jason Blum, producer of hits like Paranormal Activity and The Purge, and Roy Lee, producer of films such as The Ring and It, he plans to maintain his lifestyle. “I still live in the same apartment I’ve had for the last three years in my tiny room. We’re still going to live with each other [his roommates are Cooper Tomlinson and Anthony Pavone] and we’re just going to try and get an upgrade. I’m not going to go crazy. I just want enough closet space for my clothes and shoes,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. He’ll also need room for his large collection of sunglasses, an accessory beginning to define his look. He does, however, still go to bed every night at 10 p.m., just as methodical as before.Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition