Turning pennies into profit: the cheapest movie that’s made the most amount of money
For the sake of stating the blindingly obvious, the number one objective of any movie is to make as much money as possible. No matter the amount of passion, dedication, and creativity that goes into a project, the people footing the bill couldn’t care less unless it possesses at least some amount of earning potential.
Of course, even films that sell huge amounts of tickets and draw in stellar numbers at the box office aren’t guaranteed to turn a profit, which speaks to just how unsustainable the blockbuster model is becoming. Perhaps the most startling example is Warner Bros’ ill-fated superhero crossover Justice League, which hauled in a respectable-sounding $661million from cinemas but ended up losing money for the studio after the eye-watering $300m budget was factored in alongside marketing and distribution costs.
It boggles the mind that any movie can comfortably clear half a billion dollars during its theatrical run and still conspire to become a flop. Still, at the opposite end of the cinematic spectrum, there are the tiny gems that could. These are productions that were made on a shoestring that captured the imagination of audiences everywhere and enjoyed profit margins so vast Evil Knievel couldn’t clear them. More often than not, it tends to be a once-in-a-generation occurrence.
In the mid-1970s, Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky recouped its budget more than 200 times over, while at the tail end of the decade, George Miller’s Mad Max became the most profitable release in history after coming within a whisker of grossing $100million against production costs of just $200,000. The 1990s threw up the ground-breaking viral marketing campaign that saw The Blair Witch Project snatch the crown away from Mel Gibson’s leather-clad antihero before the found footage horror was itself usurped by the single most profitable feature there’s ever been.
Naturally, it ended up spawning a franchise that’s made an insane amount of money relative to the investment, but none of the subsequent six sequels have come close to replicating the incredible success of Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity. For whatever reason, audiences couldn’t get enough of a movie that does nothing for 80 minutes before throwing in a Steven Spielberg-suggested jump scare at the end, yielding the single most lucrative standalone cash cow Hollywood has ever created.
Writer, producer, cinematographer, editor, and director Peli shot Paranormal Activity for the princely sum of $15,000, with paying customers responding in kind by driving it to $194million at the box office. Crunching the numbers, the return on the initial investment saw the night vision chiller deliver a return of over 1.2million% , meaning it recouped its budget almost 13,000 times over.
There’s a very minor caveat for anyone willing to split hairs after Paramount shelled out $350,000 to secure the domestic distribution rights, but that doesn’t make Paranormal Activity any less profitable in the grand scheme of things.
