Curry Barker tells Rolling Stone there's an extended cut of “Obsession” running about 20 minutes longer than the theatrical version, and he'd like to release it soon. Of course, the question many will have is if there’s any legitimate reason to release this.
I would say that there’s a longer version of the movie that I would love to release, for sure.
He's careful to call the current film the true “director's cut”; this would just be an "extended cut." The theatrical version runs 108 minutes, so we're talking a nearly 2-hour-10-minute cut of a movie that works because it's lean, and I'm not sure anyone needs that. Still, you can see why the appetite exists for any filmmaker to do this.
Barker, the YouTube sketch guy turned horror hitmaker, made the film in just 20 days on a mere $750,000 budget, and it went on to gross over $500M globally. That's absurd. It's the kind of run that turns a debut into a franchise, and an "Obsession" sequel is, naturally, something he’s talked about.
Barker has also signed on to reboot the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ franchise after directing his next feature “Anything But Ghosts.” An extended home-video cut is an obvious cash-in for Focus Features: Barker himself has admitted that "all I see when I watch 'Obsession' is the problems," which makes me wonder if those extra 20 minutes were cut for good reason.
The theatrical version runs 108 minutes, so we're talking a nearly 2-hour-10-minute cut of a movie that works because it's lean, and I'm not sure anyone needs that.