How Focus Features is building deeper film engagement on gaming platforms

Obsession viewers probably don’t want to live in Bear’s apartment permanently, like his victim Nikki is forced to in the film—but what if they could live in it for just about seven minutes?

The new horror movie, distributed by Focus Features, hit theaters on May 15, racking up an impressive $58.5 million in its first two weeks at the domestic box office on a reported $750,000 budget, per Forbes. The plot follows main character Bear, a hopeless romantic who makes an enchanted wish for his childhood friend Nikki to fall in love with him, leading to much darker consequences.

Directed by YouTube filmmaker Curry Barker, the film’s initial online response has been, well, obsessive. But even before the movie had positive internet reviews to bolster its critical praise, Focus Features was stoking online engagement on Discord, where users could solve a puzzle set in Bear’s apartment and engage with the story details themselves, all in about seven minutes.

“You’ve got this massive audience playing [on gaming platforms],” Joshua Kornblit, EVP of marketing at Focus Features, told us. “[They’re] highly engaged, global, spending tons of time in these environments, and in doing so, we have this opportunity to immerse them in our stories.”

It’s not the only gaming activation that Focus Features has rolled out recently. For upcoming historical drama Pressure, a film based on a true story that follows the 72 hours before D-Day, the studio also partnered with Sawhorse Productions and Genesis Studios to create a custom Fortnite: Pressure game map.

Despite the difference in genre, both titles lend themselves to game adaptations because of the story elements that naturally work on each platform, Kornblitt said, and content designed for the gaming world can allow for deeper attention than other ad platforms.

“A normal film campaign, you’re running ads wherever you can,” he said. “In this case, we’re living in these environments where they already are and allowing fans to interact with us.”

Totally obsessed

The Obsession game is a Discord Quest, a gamified ad format the platform rolled out in 2024 that involves users playing games or watching videos made by advertisers in order to collect platform rewards like avatar decorations or Orbs. While Discord is primarily known as a communication platform and is often used for purposes beyond gaming, its roots in connecting gamers made it a natural home to stir up attention via a bespoke game, Kornblit said.

“[Quests] felt like this natural extension of, cool, you’re here with your friends, you’re looking to play games, and we can now bring that to life for people,” he said. “Regardless of what kind of IP you have, at the end of the day, it’s about the story you’re creating and the environment you’re creating.”

The Obsession Quest involves players interacting with the One Wish Willow, the object that grants Bear’s wish in the film, and several other props to escape the villainous, obsessed version of Nikki. As the game progresses, players get a taste of the film’s plot and overall sense of dread, and at the end, they’re directed to watch the trailer and buy tickets to see the film. According to Kornblit, the game reached more than a million plays in just over a week since its release, and of those plays, 200,000 clicked to buy movie tickets.

Results have been so encouraging that Korblitt said it inspired the team to keep the game running for a while longer, hopefully through the movie’s theatrical run. “As people discover the movie, we think people are going to want to come back to play it on Discord,” he said.

Pressure’s on

Meanwhile, the Fortnite: Pressure game map became available May 15 before the film’s May 29 theatrical release. In it, players fight off an incoming storm on the beaches of Normandy, creating a World War II experience reminiscent of the movie and fit to Fortnite’s typical gameplay. While game discovery on Discord is more built-in, Fortnite’s platform requires players to know what they want to play when they come in, so Focus Features relied on gaming creator partnerships to get the word out and seed interest, Kornblit said.

Taking notes from Obsession’s Discord engagement, Kornblit said the amount of time Pressure’s game will remain available is an ongoing evaluation, which will hopefully create a loop where fans discover the movies through the games, go see the film, and return to play them again.

“They really complement each other really nicely, and it’s cool that people will continue to discover it,” Kornblit said. “It’s a really powerful tool, and [we] certainly plan to keep doing it.”