Willy Wonka has delivered for Netflix.

The streamer has landed a bona fide reality ratings hit with Wonka’s The Golden Ticket after the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-themed competition series debuted at number two on its English-language TV chart.

The series scored 4.6M views in its opening week, becoming one of Netflix’s biggest unscripted launches in recent years

This is in line with the latest season of Love Is Blind – season ten set in Ohio – which also scored 4.6M in its opening week. The Kinetic Content show is considered one of Netflix’s biggest unscripted hits (its premiere came before Netflix changed the way it calculates viewers).

The numbers bode well for a renewal of the Eureka-produced show. Age of Attraction, Velvet Hammer’s dating reality series that launched earlier this year, premiered with 3.8M viewers in its first week and was handed a quick renewal, although admittedly The Golden Ticket is a more expensive show to produce.

Shot in Australia, the series sees 12 lucky golden ticket winners entering the Chocolate Factory to compete for a sweet prize: a lifetime supply of money. As the winners and their partners step through the factory gates, they face a series of series of challenges. There are games, tests and temptations designed to test the competitors physically, mentally, and morally before one walks away with the prize.

A two-part finale for The Golden Ticket will premiere on September 30.

Wonka’s The Golden Ticket was only bested on the list by Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, which was number one with 14.5M views in its second week. This comes after it received 12.5M views in its first four days on the service. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story also ranked in the Top 10 list in 92 countries, up from 89 in its first week.

Crew Girl was at number three with 4.5M views.

Elsewhere, A Different World, the sequel series to the classic sitcom from 1987, debuted at number four with 4.2M views. This was followed by the second season of The Gentlemen, Gabby’s Dollhouse, WWE’s Raw, the first season of The Gentlemen, The Great British Baking Show and Danny Go!.

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.