With Hollywood budgets being what they are, a budget under $10 million is practically tiny. Despite this, many films have gone on to make a killing at the box office from budgets that barely scratch the surface of their competition.
So, here are 14 smaller-budget movies that made the big bucks at the box office:
- Juno
- Mad Max
- Paranormal Activity
- Little Miss Sunshine
- El Mariachi
- The Blair Witch Project
- Annabelle
- Super Size Me
- Rocky
- My Big Fat Greek Wedding
- The Devil Inside
- Halloween
- Moonlight
- Napoleon Dynamite
I’m glad you type in the list lol. No way I’m clicking on a buzzfeed link
It was something we decided was for the best as some kind be clickbaity but they are also a good way of sparking discussion (especially as everyone here can come up with better), so this approach gives us the best of both worlds.
No Everything Everywhere All At Once?
Budget: $25M? Box office: $143M
It’s not making the same rate of return as the others on the list.
El Mariachi… Honestly, personal opinion, Roberto Rodriguez has never come close to making anything this amazing in his career again.
He has tried to recapture it, but the story, the film techniques, everything in El Mariachi was fresh, new, exciting, well considered and executed. One of my favorite films.
I had the DVD special with making of bits.
It shows how they went to a local blacksmith to make the pully rig for the zipline scene and it was dirt cheap.
Damn I miss DVDs from back in the day. Directors commentary, deleted scenes, bloopers and behind the scenes were the shit.
It’s the ultimate in the triumph of a great idea and talented team over budget.
Glad to see some love for it here.
No primer?
They begged borrowed and stole everything to make the movie, except lighting.
They spent $8k on renting lighting to complete filming.
Wikipedia says they made nearly a million at the box, before DVD sales.
Clerks was made for $37k, including Kevin Smith maxing out his parents credit cards, and earned $4.4M.
It’s difficult to know the criteria they’ve ordered it in but $840k box office fails to meet the “millions” specification of the title.
This motivated me to, once again, try to find “Colin”. Lowest budget movie ever I would think. 200£? It’s a zombie movie shown from the zombie’s point of view. Seems like it had a great ending, been years since I’ve watched.
https://archive.org/download/Colin.2008.Vose
Neither the MP4 nor AVI look great, but seems the MP4 is the winner. Anyone have a better copy?
It should be streaming on Amazon Prime and the DVD is only a couple of quid (I think I own a copy but would need to check).
Wasn’t Manos: Hands of Fate made because the creator bet a dude he could make money on a budget of, like, $45? Not $45m but just $45. IIRC, he won the bet; but only barely. It’s a god awful, terrible film.
I may be thinking of a different movie… 🤔
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Swingers? Clerks?
Swingers:
- Budget: 0.25M
- Box office: $4.6M
Clerks:
- Budget: 0.25M
- Box office: $3.2M
Swingers and Clerks were DVD/cult hits after their theatrical runs ended
It feels like this year franchise films haven’t been the dead cert people thought they were (even though some topped the charts, it was more hit and miss) while so low budget films have made their budget back many times over. I’m hopeful we’ll see more lower budget films commissioned going forward, as you can afford to take a few misses there and still make money. Of course, that would require someone in charge to have a good eye for potential which is harder than just greenlighting a sequel or prequel but A24 and Neon are doing well on this front.
