Curry Barker fever will continue into next summer as Focus Features and Blumhouse Atomic Monster are releasing the Obsession filmmaker’s next movie, Anything But Ghosts on May 7, 2027.

That’s similar to the early May launch date of Obsession which bowed during the third weekend of May this year (May 15) and opened to $17.1M domestic, but held like a rock, spiking an unprecedented +39% in its second weekend ($23.9M) and another +14% in its third weekend with $27.3M for a $263.4M final domestic, near $520M worldwide tally.

As we first told you, Focus has worldwide rights on Anything But Ghosts with Universal Pictures International handling international distribution for the studio. Barker co-wrote the movie with his
longtime creative collaborator and Obsession star Cooper Tomlinson. Anything But Ghosts stars Tomlinson and Barker as wannabe “ghosthunters” who find themselves in over their heads as things spiral wildly and terrifyingly out of control. Violet McGraw and Chris Reinacher also star with Bryce Dallas Howard and Aaron Paul. Barker in interviews has said that the feature takes place in the same universe as Obsession.

Already on opening on May 7, 2027 next year is Lionsgate’s Mel Gibson directed The Resurrection of the Christ (Part One) (technically that’s going on May 6) as well as 20th Century Studios’ Patrick Schwarzenegger and Phoebe Dynevor movie Beach Read. Sony kicks off summer 2027 on April 30 with the feature take of Nintendo video game The Legend of Zelda.

The other production companies on Anything But Ghosts are Spooky Pictures, Divide/Conquer, in association with Image Nation and Barker and Tomlinson’s That’s a Bad Idea. EPs are Daniel Bekerman, Curry Barker, Cooper Tomlinson and Ben Ross. Producers are Roy Lee, Steven Schneider, Jason Blum, Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath.

Focus Features acquired the CAA Media financed handled Obsession out of TIFF Midnight Madness 2025 for $15M. The movie went onto become Focus Features highest grossing movie ever in addition to be the highest grossing movie ever acquired out of a film festival (unseating Blair Witch Project‘s $248.6M WW gross). Barker’s debut feature, Milk & Serial, first streamed on YouTube to close to 3M views off a production budget of $800. Obsession was made for $750K by Capstone Studios before Focus picked up the title.

Barker mentioned to Deadline at our DGA TIFF panel that on Anything But Ghosts, “The hardest day on Obsession was the easiest day on Anything But Ghosts.”

He added, “We had a 130-page script and we had 26 days to shoot it. I’m also starring in it and directing and I’m the lead character. I have more lines than anyone in the movie.”

“Zach Kregger just told me, ‘You have to cut 30 pages’ and I probably should have listened to him. So, did my manager; he told me that, too.”

“But I didn’t cut a single page because I wanted to shoot all of it,” says Barker who was at TIFF for the one-year anniversary of the Obsession premiere, “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and we were compromising shots left and right off the shot list. Gone. Just like coverage was going out the windows. It was crazy.”

Curry Barker‘s Obsession followup has a date with movie theaters. Anything But Ghosts will arrive on May 7, 2027 from Focus Features, a little less than one year after Obsession hit theaters and became the studio’s top grossing movie of all time.

Barker co-wrote the script for Anything But Ghosts with longtime partner Cooper Tomlinson, with the duo selling the script and shooting the feature before Obsession became a phenomenon.

Barker and Tomlinson star in the new feature “as wannabe ‘ghosthunters’ who find themselves in over their heads as things spiral wildly and terrifyingly out of control,” per the logline. Aaron Paul, Bryce Dallas Howard, Violet McGraw and Chris Reinacher also star in the movie, which has a production budget of around $5 million.

The two comedy partners got their start with the channel That’s a Bad Idea, where they became known for their sketch comedy and later posted Milk and Serial, an $800 horror short that went viral and helped propel Barker’s directing career.

Focus, which acquired Obsession out of the 2025 Toronto Film Festival for $15 million, has global rights on the film and Universal Pictures International distribute overseas. Universal has become a key home for Barker, and also has his next original feature as well.

Jason Blum produces for Blumhouse-Atomic Monster, with Roy Lee and Steven Schneider producing for Spooky Pictures and Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath producing for Divide/Conquer. The film is made in association with Image Nation and That’s a Bad Idea. Barker and Tomlinson executive produce with Daniel Bekerman and Image Nation’s Ben Ross.

As Obsession was breaking records, Barker sat with The Hollywood Reporter for a cover shoot, and shared some thoughts on Ghosts, which he was editing from his apartment. “Thank God I have people around me to ground me and tell me that Anything But Ghosts is good and different, and that’s OK,” said Barker. “Nobody wants the same movie twice. So people can expect it to be very different than Obsession, but my voice will still be very strong in it.”

Obsession topped $500 million globally, and is in the awards conversation. It stands as the No. 5 top grossing horror movie of all time globally.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has thrown her weight behind the Zurich-premiering My Home of Wind and Sand, an important and affecting documentary following a young woman’s fight for her community’s independence.

From Austrian filmmaker Patrick Wally, who shot the feature over a 10-year period, My Home of Wind and Sand is a portrait of Sahrawi activist Najla Mohamed Lamin. She was born and raised in the refugee camps near Tindouf, Algeria, and has devoted her adult life to campaigning for Western Sahara’s liberation from Moroccan sovereignty. We follow Lamin from her studies in the U.S. to representing the Sahrawi people at the United Nations, where she argues for peaceful resistance as a generation born in exile (Spain withdrew its occupation of the region in 1975) grows older and angrier without resolution.

When armed conflict resumes after decades of ceasefire, the convictions that have shaped Najla’s public life are tested. And then, toward the end of the doc, comes a kick to the gut: The UN Security Council adopts a US-sponsored resolution describing genuine autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty as the “most feasible solution” to the conflict.

Lamin and Wally, whose sweet and unlikely friendship anchors this depiction of the Sahrawi people’s fight for justice, were celebrated at the Zurich Film Festival premiere on Tuesday evening, where they urged attendees to spread the word about the issue.

And Thunberg, who in January 2025 visited the Sahrawi camps with Lamin accompanying and translating for her, spoke plainly about what must change and called out the media for its silence. “This movie is so much about betrayal,” said the young activist. “First, it is the occupation and the violence in itself that somehow becomes viewed as normal. […] It’s not attractive enough to gain any media attention or clicks, which is yet another betrayal. And then it’s the whole international community, all the international organizations that people are putting their entire trust to, but are being met with nothing but betrayal.”

She continued, asking the audience to take Lamin’s story with them: “We do not talk about Western Sahara — people don’t even know about Western Sahara, and there’s just this extreme hypocrisy that makes me so, so angry and upset. While this story is, of course, incredibly inspirational, it is about perseverance, steadfastness, and continuing the fight as a matter of duty. I am convinced that Najla [and her community] do not want thank-yous or applause, but action. It falls on every single one of us in this room, especially us privileged people who have a platform or access to resources, to actually take that moral obligation to amplify the Western Saharan struggles. […] We will spread the word, and do everything in our power to ensure global solidarity and justice. Because otherwise, we are nothing more than hypocrites ourselves.”

Lamin reflected on seeing a decade of her life up on screen and paid tribute to the thousands of people — including her late sister — who will never have their voices heard. She said at Zurich’s Kinokoni: “Standing in Europe, in Switzerland, I think it’s very easy for us to think that we are completely separate from each other as nations, as cultures, as activists, as women, as men. ‘Oh, she lives in Africa. She has nothing to do with me. I live in Switzerland. I have nothing to do with the person in Gaza or in Sudan or in Congo.’”

The campaigner added: “But when you really sit with yourself, you do a little bit of research, or just take the courage to be honest with yourself… We’re only one small planet, and we’re not separated. We’re not different. Morocco cannot do what it’s doing without the support of Europe and the U.S., and Israel cannot do what it’s doing to the Palestinian people without the support of Europe and the U.S. […] Free European citizens, you have a very, very big responsibility to look back at your privileges, to look back at your government, at your interests, and see where [you] can make a difference.”

The room erupted into raucous applause as Lamin spoke. All she is asking for, she added, is a referendum where her people can decide their own future. Wally added: “I was so astonished of her story and how she tells it, and even [at] the first meeting, everything she told me… It was eye-opening for me. She had so much knowledge, and I learned so much from her that I wouldn’t have expected. So that’s why I tried to make a film about her.”

Lightdox is handling worldwide sales on My Home of Wind and Sand, a WyFilm production. The 22nd Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24-Oct. 4.