Forget Titanic It is Avatar. We’re talking about the features that cost little and returned the investment several times over at the box office*.
Hollywood loves a money machine! Together, these ten titles have had 33 sequels and remakes.
10. Summer Madness
YEAR 1973
BUDGET US$ 777 thousand
BOX OFFICE $115 million
PERFORMANCE 14,800%
This nostalgic teen comedy, full of big cars and ’50s and ’60s rock hits, follows four friends on their last night before heading off to college. The director, a novice, was very resourceful to save money and shot the whole thing in 29 days. The success of the feature paved the way for his next ambitious project… Star Wars!
The filmmaker was none other than George Lucas.
9. Rocky, A Fighter
YEAR 1976
BUDGET $1.1 million
BOX OFFICE $225 million
PERFORMANCE 20,400%
Sylvester Stallone only had $106 in the bank when he came up with the script. And yet, he refused to sell him to producers for $350,000 unless they guaranteed he would play the lead. The distributing studio, which wanted a more well-known star, only released $ 1 million for the budget. The producers had to pay the rest of the money.
8. Night of the Living Dead
YEAR 1968
BUDGET $114 thousand
BOX OFFICE $30 million
PERFORMANCE 26,300%
The greatest classic of zombie movies caused a real “fever” in the public at the time of its release – and forever associated director George Romero with the genre. At the time, Romero was already an expert at making cheap films. Here, he used chocolate sauce like blood and cooked ham (and even pieces of clay!) to simulate human flesh. In 2006, the film was re-released in 3D.
7. Super Size Me
YEAR 2004
BUDGET $65k
BOX OFFICE $20 million
PERFORMANCE 30.769%
With the subtitle The Clown Diet, this documentary showed how a diet watered down by McDonald’s drastically affects health. The director himself, Morgan Spurlock, was the guinea pig. Two months after the premiere, the chain announced that it would no longer sell combos in the “super” size – but claimed that the decision was unrelated to the film’s repercussions.
6. Halloween
YEAR 1978
BUDGET $325k
BOX OFFICE $107 million
PERFORMANCE 32,900%
The story of the psychopath who returns from the asylum to kill his sister on Halloween was made so cheaply that even the villain’s mask was second-hand. The team used one by actor William Shatner, popular at the time because of the series. Star Trek. They just repainted the piece, cut the hair, and drilled new eye holes. The fee of actress Jamie Lee Curtis (true Lies) it was only $8,000! The director, John Carpenter, composed the soundtrack himself, in four days.
5. Mad Max
YEAR 1979
BUDGETUS$ 300 thousand
BOX OFFICE $99 million
PERFORMANCE 33,000%
This sci-fi about an apocalyptic future that smells like asphalt and burning rubber pitted Mel Gibson and director George Miller (Happy Feet) in the map. Miller performed a true “car multiplication” miracle: several vehicles were repurposed old Australian police cars. Others were repainted several times to be used in different scenes.
4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
YEAR 1974
BUDGET US$ 83 thousand
BOX OFFICE $30.8 million
PERFORMANCE 37.108%
The film that launched the “slasher” genre (the one with a crazed killer who goes around killing characters) was also a phenomenon at the time. It was considered so violent that it was banned in countries like England and Australia. For some of the scenes, director Tobe Hooper imported a real human skeleton from India – it was cheaper than a fake model made in the USA.
3. Tarnation
YEAR 2003
BUDGET $218
BOX OFFICE US$ 590 thousand
PERFORMANCE 270,600%
A feature that cost less than a video camera? It’s easy to explain: to create this documentary about his childhood and adolescence alongside a schizophrenic mother, director Jonathan Caouette used only material he already had at home: home movies, amateurly recorded testimonials, photos, messages on answering machines… powerful story, it did well on the art circuits.
2. The Blair Witch Project
YEAR 1999
BUDGET US$ 60 thousand
BOX OFFICE $248 million
PERFORMANCE413,300%
The story of three amateur videographers who got lost in a forest while recording a report on a supposed local witch launched the subgenre “horror with fake documentary” – which continues to yield to this day, with Apollo 18, The Last Exorcism It is Paranormal activity. It’s a good idea: the actors film everything themselves, saving technicians’ salaries
1. Paranormal Activity
YEAR2009
BUDGET$15k
BOX OFFICE$197 million
PERFORMANCE1,313,300%
Unexplained noises in their San Diego home inspired Oren Peli (a video game programmer at the time) to shoot this horror about a young couple haunted by an evil spirit. The guy invested US$ 11,000 out of his own pocket and did everything at home. There were only seven days of shooting, without a script, in his own home. The protagonists each received a measly US$ 500 (luckily for them, the contract also provided for a profit sharing). After the film was picked up by a distributor, Peli was given an extra $4,000 to shoot a more impactful ending – a suggestion from one of the film’s early fans… Steven Spielberg!