The path from internet oddity to studio release rarely runs in a straight line. For Curry Barker and Anthony Pavone, it ran through a haunted chair.

A friendship, then a short

Barker and Pavone met roughly seven years ago in a Los Angeles acting class, where Pavone was assisting the coach and Barker was a new student, The Hollywood Reporter recounted. Barker had built a following on the YouTube comedy channel "That's a Bad Idea," but his more sinister instincts surfaced in "The Chair," a 2023 horror short — starring Pavone as a man whose grip on reality frays after he brings home an antique chair — that racked up more than 10 million views and traveled the festival circuit.

The short that opened doors

That short caught the eye of producers Mark Lane and James Harris, leading to Barker's feature debut, "Obsession." The film follows a music-store employee, played by Michael Johnston, whose crush on a coworker (Inde Navarrette) curdles into something darker after he comes into possession of a wish-granting object — a premise Focus Features and the film's listings frame as a horror-tinged satire of modern dating. Cooper Tomlinson, Barker's longtime YouTube collaborator, and Andy Richter round out the cast, per Focus Features. The studio released it theatrically on May 15, 2026, and it is now available on digital platforms.

Keeping each other honest

The friendship comes with rules. Pavone appears in "Obsession" only in a small party-scene role — one he auditioned for. "Don't just hand me a role because it's your friend," he told the Hollywood Reporter, describing a discipline the two seem to take seriously; he says he later auditioned for, and did not get, a part in Barker's next project. It's an unusually unsentimental arrangement for a partnership born in friendship — and, perhaps, part of why a viral short about cursed furniture turned into a real career rather than a one-off.

A familiar pipeline

Barker and Pavone are the latest example of a now-established pathway: horror shorts that find enormous online audiences and vault their makers toward studio deals, a route that has produced a wave of young genre filmmakers in recent years. Whether "Obsession" marks the start of a long run or a promising first step, the duo have already proved the premise — that, handled well, even a haunted chair can open a door in Hollywood.