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
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.
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.
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?
Swingers? Clerks?
Swingers:
- Budget: 0.25M
- Box office: $4.6M
Clerks:
- Budget: 0.25M
- Box office: $3.2M
