Zombies, strippers, and Mel Gibson…
No matter who they starred, these low-budget films surprised people and broke records and
box office records.
An adaptation of the popular John Green novel, the weepy teen romance "The Fault in Our Stars"
became a budget blockbuster, toppling a number of flashier new releases in June 2014.
A tragic love story starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort as terminally ill teens,
"The Fault in Our Stars" opened against the Tom Cruise-led sci-fi action flick "Edge of
Tomorrow" and the second weekend of Disney's "Maleficent" starring Angelina Jolie.
It still, somehow, managed to win its weekend by a significant margin.
Both of the pricier projects eventually outgrossed the underdog romance, but given that they
each cost over ten times more to produce, "The Fault in Our Stars" turned out to be
the more prosperous investment — and one of the most profitable movies of the year.
"The Fault in Our Stars" raked in $307 million in worldwide box office and another $43 million
in US DVD and Blu-ray sales, all on a budget of about $12 million.
This is evidence of how much the movie business has changed over the past decade.
Today, young adult novel adaptations without any wizards or weird dystopias seem to have
"straight to streaming" written all over them, but before the outbreak of the streaming wars,
studios could still count on the occasional low-budget gamble to pay off big and cover
the cost of a dozen small future projects.
In the modern movie landscape, movies like "The Fault in Our Stars" simply don't get
the opportunity to surprise us at the box office.
"Welcome to East High."
"High School Musical" is a rare example of a blockbuster TV movie debuting on cable and
then selling like wildfire on home video.
In 2006, the musical comedy set a record for the most-viewed premiere in the history of
The Disney Channel, but that was only a precursor for its massive multi-media commercial success.
Six months later, Disney released the movie on DVD and reported 1.2 million sales in its
first week on the shelves.
It's estimated that "High School Musical" grossed over $131 million in DVD sales in
the United States alone.
It was the very first feature film to go on sale in its entirety on iTunes, as well as
the first TV soundtrack ever to hit #1 on the Billboard pop chart, according to Playbill.
"High School Musical" has since become a hugely profitable franchise.
"High School Musical 2" grossed $93 million on DVD, and "High School Musical 3: Senior
Year" made the leap to theaters, where it brought home $274 million worldwide.
The movie itself has been adapted for the stage, leading to "High School Musical: The
Musical: The Series," a mockumentary series on Disney+ about high school students putting
on the stage musical based on the movie.
In 2021, Variety estimated that, within five years of its debut, the "High School Musical"
franchise had grossed $4 billion in retail sales.
And what was the production budget for the first "High School Musical," Disney's initial
investment in this monster franchise?
$4.2 million.
We'll call that a passing grade.
There are a few subjects that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences tend to
eat up like candy, chief among them being British royals and World War II.
Tom Hooper's "The King's Speech" gave them a dose of both, telling the true story of
Britain's King George VI, whose stutter was an obstacle to his duties as the figurehead
of a nation creeping towards war.
It's a character drama, mostly centered on the relationship between George, his family
— including Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Elizabeth — and the Australian actor who
serves as his speech therapist.
An independent production working with a budget of about $15 million, "The King's Speech"
dominated the British box office upon its release in 2010, and gradually picked up steam
in the US during the 2011 awards season.
By the end of its long theatrical run, it accumulated a worldwide gross of just under
$424 million and the Oscar for Best Picture.
It also lent major credibility to director Tom Hooper, who would later helm the disastrous
2019 film adaptation of the stage musical "Cats."
The lesson here: just because a filmmaker can achieve commercial and critical success
using $15 million doesn't mean you should give him $95 million to invest in digital
fur technology.
"Love means never having to say you're sorry."
Interest in Arthur Hiller's 1970 romantic tragedy "Love Story" was seeded by a novel
adaptation of the screenplay being written and released while the film was still in production.
The book was a smash hit, and so was the film that followed, grossing $136 million dollars
in the worldwide box office — the equivalent of $1 billion dollars in today's inflation.
Close your eyes and imagine a college romance making Avengers money in 2022 — it feels
impossible.
While we can't account for how much was spent to promote "Love Story" — after all, the
marketing of the novel should surely be considered part of the film's advertising budget — the
American Film Institute reports that about $2.26 million was spent to produce the film,
less than 2% of its eventual box office gross.
No cinematic legend has a more humble beginning than "Mad Max," an Australian micro-budget
film directed by medical doctor-turned-filmmaker George Miller and starring a bunch of unknown
and amateur actors.
The production and release of the 1979 post-apocalyptic revenge movie was an uphill battle on every
level.
It was shot over six weeks on highways that were closed for filming without permits, populated
with real-life outlaw bikers using their own equipment and wardrobe, edited on homemade
equipment, and banned upon release in neighboring New Zealand.
Nevertheless, "Mad Max" performed well commercially in its native country of Australia and became
an international cult classic, accumulating nearly $100 million in global box office receipts.
The profit margin on "Mad Max" is almost too large to believe, with the entire production
costing only about $200,000, meaning that the film grossed nearly 500 times its budget.
The film's success launched the careers of both director George Miller and star Mel Gibson,
and the pair reunited for two increasingly expensive sequels, "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior"
in 1981 and "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" in 1985.
Miller would then move on to a wider variety of projects such as "The Witches of Eastwick",
"Babe: Pig in the City", and "Happy Feet."
When Miller returned to the franchise with "Mad Max: Fury Road" in 2015, it was a critical
success and a cultural sensation, winning six Academy Awards and grossing $389 million
dollars.
Of course, it was on a budget of $150 million, one and a half times the cumulative gross
of the original film.
The franchise continues to expand with the hotly anticipated prequel "Furiosa," all on
the backs of a small guerrilla production and a budget of under a quarter of a million
dollars.
"Hey Mike!
Hey man.
Yo!
Hey, what's going on?
What's going on, bro?"
"Magic Mike" is loosely based on star Channing Tatum's real-life time as a stripper in Tampa,
Florida.
It's a sordid, steamy, and surprisingly sobering coming-of-age story brought to life by master
director Steven Soderbergh, balancing the over-the-top eroticism of the strippers' night
lives with the quiet and complicated details of their personal relationships.
Released in the summer of June 2012, as perfect counter-programming against Seth MacFarlane's
"Ted", "Magic Mike" never hit the top of the box office but had staying power throughout
the summer.
It accumulated a worldwide gross of $167 million on a budget of just $7 million.
The film's success led to an even bigger sequel, "Magic Mike XXL," a stage show, a reality
spin-off series, and 2023's series-capping feature "Magic Mike's Last Dance."
Shinichiro Ueda's "One Cut of the Dead" is a nesting doll of great gimmicks.
In this action-horror-comedy, a small crew is in the midst of making a low-budget zombie
movie when an actual zombie apocalypse suddenly begins.
For 37 minutes, we follow the bloody slapstick antics of the actors, director, and company
as they attempt to survive the disaster, presented via one uninterrupted take.
After that, things get even more wild… but not in the way you might expect.
"One Cut of the Dead" has grossed $27.5 million dollars worldwide, which doesn't sound like
very much until you consider its shoestring budget of 2.5 million Yen — about $23,000
U.S. dollars.
It was produced by film school Enbu Seminar as basically a student film which the student
actors actually paid to perform, per Variety.
Its success beyond its local theatrical run took everyone by surprise, eventually leading
to it recouping its budget over 1000 times over.
The scrappy success of "One Cut" led French director Michel Hazanavicius, who won an Academy
Award for "The Artist", to create a remake called "Final Cut."
Despite, or perhaps because of, its much larger budget of $4 million, the new version failed
to reproduce the charm of the original.
With the Oscars gradually becoming less relevant to the moviegoing public, the Academy Award
for Best Picture is not quite the measuring stick for greatness that it used to be.
The 21st century has seen several underwhelming winners like "Green Book," "Argo," and "Crash,"
to name a few.
It seems almost miraculous when the Academy crowns a worthy champion.
So imagine the gleeful surprise amongst cinephiles worldwide when Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" — already
the winner of 2019's Palme d'Or and an overwhelming critical favorite — became the first non-English-language
film ever to take home Best Picture.
A Best Picture win or nomination reliably lends a boost to a film's theatrical attendance
in the United States as curious moviegoers attempt to see as many candidates as possible
before Oscar night, and "Parasite" was no exception.
"Parasite's" domestic box office draw took a sizable jump after the Oscar nominations
were announced, and another after its Best Picture win.
That added up to a healthy $53 million domestic and $262 million worldwide gross.
"Parasite" isn't the highest-grossing Best Picture of its era, but it is one of the most
profitable.
Made with a budget of about $11 million, "Parasite" made its money back 23 times over, not counting
streaming and television rights.
Next to no one saw "Pitch Perfect's" smash commercial success coming, but frankly, we
probably should have.
This Anna Kendrick-starring comedy about the misadventures of a college a cappella group
was released in 2012 during the height of "Glee" fever, and between that television
comedy and the array of rival singing competitions on broadcast television.
"Hi!
Any interest in joining our a cappella group?"
"Oh, right, this is like a thing now."
"Oh, totes!"]
The atmosphere was so saturated with singing that Universal Pictures had actually put "Pitch
Perfect" on their back burner for years, out of fear that they might burst the bubble,
per The Ringer.
It was only after the phenomenal success of the ensemble comedy "Bridesmaids" that the
studio committed to the project, with a modest $17 million budget.
"Pitch Perfect" opened to a limited release in late September, up against "Hotel Transylvania"
and "Looper."
Positive reviews and word of mouth assured that the film would climb from #6 to #3 at
the box office when it expanded to theaters nationwide the following weekend, actually
leap-frogging "Looper" and besting the weekend's big Disney animated release, "Frankenweenie."
By the time it completed its theatrical run, "Pitch Perfect" had grossed $115 million worldwide.
Its success was followed by two sequels with increasingly larger budgets and a cumulative
box office haul of $588 million.
The "Pitch Perfect" franchise continues to rock on, with the Peacock streaming series
"Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin" out now.
Director Danny Boyle has frequently made a lot out of a little, with his low-budget dark
comedy "Trainspotting" becoming a cult classic and his grim and bloody "28 Days Later" winning
back its $8 million budget ten times over.
His biggest commercial success, however, came in 2008 with the release of "Slumdog Millionaire,"
an independently-financed drama about a young man accused of cheating to win on a game show.
In addition to winning the Academy Award for Best Picture and launching the international
career of star Dev Patel, "Slumdog Millionaire" grossed $378 million worldwide, all off of
a budget of only $15 million.
At the time of its release, it was the highest-grossing independent film in the history of the British
movie industry, though it was eventually dethroned by "The King's Speech."
You might imagine that the film being set in India, home to one of the world's biggest
film industries and a film-loving culture, would be a major contributor to its global
box office success.
However, you'd be imagining incorrectly.
While a big hit in many other international markets, "Slumdog Millionaire" was not as
well received in India, where critics and audiences were displeased with the film's
portrayal of their country as impoverished and corrupt.
Some Indians were justifiably displeased when a movie copping some of their style but made
by an English filmmaker was hailed as a worldwide sensation, while British and American audiences
continued to overlook the Indian movies from which it drew influence.