It turns out that filmmaker Curry Barker found inspiration from an unlikely source when he was putting together his hit horror movie Obsession.

A huge critical and commercial success, Obsession centres around two close friends whose lives are forever changed after one makes a wish for the other to love him “more than anyone else in the fucking world”.

When his wish comes true, things take a disastrous, and tragic, turn – with Curry getting the idea for his film from an iconic episode of The Simpsons.

Speaking to Triple J before Obsession’s release, the director explained that he had invited some friends over to watch an episode of the comedy It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, which he made a guest appearance in.

“Before the episode [aired] there was a Simpsons episode where [Bart] has a monkey paw, and he’s making wishes and stuff,” he recalled.

Of course, Simpsons fans will know already that he’s referring to the show’s second ever Halloween special, Treehouse Of Horror II, which includes a segment where the family travels to Morocco and buys a cursed monkey’s paw at a market, which grants their wishes with sinister consequences.

He continued: “I was just excited to see my Always Sunny episode, but it hit me right then and there on the couch that Obsession idea that I had would be perfect if it was a wish movie.

“And so I actually remember the moment, I remember being on the couch, and being like, ‘oh my god’ and writing. It down. And after that, I just kept developing and developing that idea.”

In a separate interview with Variety, he said that after watching the Treehouse Of Horror special, he got to “thinking that I’ve never seen a straight crazy horror” based on that concept.

“We’ve seen ‘be careful what you wish for’ tons of times,” he noted. “But we’ve never seen my version of it. I instantly started thinking about what I could do with that…”

For what it’s worth, the Simpsons episode in question is based on WW Jacobs’ short story The Monkey’s Paw.

After coming up with his concept, Curry had to come up with a way of conveying the wish on screen, ruling out using a monkey’s paw because, as he told IndieWire, the image was already “too recognisable”.

He then considered going with a “wishing well”, “shooting stars” and “a wishbone”, before deciding on creating his own device, the One Wish Willow.

Since its release last month, Obsession has become one of the year’s most popular new films, with an enviable critical score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.2 stars from fans on Letterboxd.

Obsession is in cinemas now.