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17 Low-Budget Movies That Made Millions, Ranked By How Unexpected They Are
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Vote up the low-budget movies you're most surprised became major hits.
Each year, Hollywood production companies spend millions upon millions of dollars producing films, anticipating that the larger-than-life special effects, A-list actors, and accompanying grand musical scores will launch their prized works to the top of the list at the box office.
While spending big often helps, often the greatest return on investment comes from low-budget films that make millions once they're released to theaters. Somehow, without extensive props and elaborate sets, these diamond-in-the-rough gems are unexpected hits that turn a massive profit as they go down in history as cinema's best cult classics.
So, if the glitz and glamor that big budgets provide doesn't make a hit, what does? The best low-budget films contain some lessons on how to buck trends and become an unexpected hit.
- 1204 VOTES
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Premise: An amateur boxer from Philadelphia finds himself with the opportunity to fight the heavy-weight boxing champion of the world.
Budget: $960,000
Box Office: $117 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Though it's hard to remember a time before Sylvester Stallone's fame, he was a relative unknown when he wrote and starred in Rocky. His performance in the David and Goliath-esque story wasn't the only reason the movie captured audiences' hearts (though it certainly helped). While Rocky was a sports film on the surface, it also held the contents of a dramatic love story, as well as an ode to individual determination. Additionally, the production team was able to bring Philadelphia to life in remarkably real fashion by shooting in recognizable locations around the city - luring audiences into the depths of Rocky Balboa's world.
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Premise: After killer Michael Meyers escapes from a nearby mental institution, he goes on a murderous rampage in his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois. Babysitter Laurie Strode becomes his prime target - and perhaps the only one who can stop him.
Budget: $325,000
Box Office: $47 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Though it wasn't the first ever slasher flick, Halloween was one of the earlier entries in the genre to do well with mainstream audiences. Critics credit Jamie Lee Curtis's acting for portraying the perfect example of the final girl left to survive a series of harrowing events, possessing the virginal qualities typically required to survive according to horror character conventions. Along with these expected qualities, Curtis's character also embodied an underlying fierceness, as she fights off her attacker multiple times while trying to spare a young family from demise.
- 3143 VOTES
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Premise: As society breaks down due to oil shortages and destruction of the natural landscape, an Australian police officer reconnects to his humanity as he works to take down a violent motorcycle gang.
Budget : $300,000
Box Office: $8.7 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Set and filmed entirely in Australia, even director George Miller didn't expect Mad Max to strike a chord with international audiences. However, the underlying storyline is one that people of all cultures could appreciate, as it holds underlying tones of a universal tale. Miller explained:
From the first Mad Max which I thought was specifically [centered in] Australia, I was really quite astonished and didn’t understand for a long time why it succeeded in Japan, why they saw it as a samurai movie, why in France they equated it to the American Western, a Western on wheels. Scandinavia saw Max as a lone Viking warrior or a Norse warrior. Until then, I had never heard of Joseph Campbell and just a little bit about [Carl Jung]. But then I suddenly realized the film didn’t have those resonances because I was particularly clever. It’s that I tapped into something unconsciously.
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- 4137 VOTES
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Premise: King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table go out in search of the Holy Grail, meeting a series of unfortunate, but hilarious, obstacles along the way.
Budget: £229,575
Box Office: $2.6 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Though Monty Python was already very successful as a sketch comedy group with their TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus, this was their first foray into film, so success wasn't a given. While most comedies rely strictly on the banter between characters for its laughs, Monty Python and the Holy Grail uses every tactic under the sun, from wit to physical comedy to pure absurdity, in order to give audiences a multi-faceted comedy. Every detail, including musical choices, gestures, and even cleverly placed scene cuts, adds to the hilarity. Even more impressive than its relative box office success against the small budget is how enduring many jokes from the film remain in modern pop culture.
- 5165 VOTES
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Premise: A quirky teen with a strange family home dynamic who is alienated at school helps his new friend run for Class President.
Budget: $400,000
Box Office: $46.1 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Comedy tends to be hit or miss, but the off-beat humor of Jon Heder as Napoleon turned into a definitive success. While adult audiences may have missed the point, younger audiences loved the easily quotable lines and universal humor that allowed them to bond with others through the common thread created by Napoleon Dynamite. As kids from elementary school into college easily recited lines from the film as a sort of inside joke, the movie's popularity steadily grew until the masses were questioning, “You gonna eat your tots?”
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Premise: Determined to shed light on a local urban legend about the Blair Witch, three film students set out into the woods with cameras to investigate the wild tales of torture and murder. After the trio goes missing, their cameras reveal a horrific tale recounting the moments leading up to their unfortunate - and uncertain - fates.
Budget: $60,000
Box Office: $248.6 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Some people find documentaries regarding paranormal topics were much more chilling than horror films. The producers of The Blair Witch Project likely realized that as they relied on the found-footage format to create a gripping narrative on an extremely small budget. While placing the actors in the woods to shoot the footage through home video cameras aided in the horror flick's believability, it was the marketing team that really solidified this movie's success. When the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, the actors were listed with their real names in the credits and deemed either missing or deceased. Distributor Artisan Entertainment furthered this meta-story by creating a website dedicated to the events, including fake police reports and other materials, to convince audiences they were witnessing a true-to-life missing persons case through the lens of those who experienced it.
- 7143 VOTES
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Premise: Shortly after Katie and Micah move into a quiet, suburban neighborhood, they begin experiencing strange ghostly activity in their home each night. Katie reveals that she has felt as though a demonic presence has been haunting her since she was a child, so Micah sets up a video camera to record any paranormal occurrences that may occur while they are sleeping.
Budget: $15,000
Box Office: $193 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? One of the most successful films to embrace the found-footage format, Paranormal Activity appealed to audiences not in spite of its relatively low budget, but because of it. Instead of using special effects and the latest technology to produce a highly theatrical horror spectacle, the audience witnesses the home video footage through the eyes of the characters. The storyline also takes viewers through a wide range of emotions, creating a unique and personal experience.
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Premise: When two camp counselors are murdered at Camp Crystal Lake, the facilities are forced to close. Years later, a group of hopeful counselors work to re-open the camp and are stalked by the elusive killer.
Budget: $550,000
Box Office: $39.7 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? No one involved in the filming and production process of Friday the 13th believed that it was really going to generate any noticeable recognition at the box office. With minimal spending and a straightforward storyline, the production team intended the horror flick to be a filler while they worked on a larger project. However, director Sean S. Cunningham's idea to name the slasher “Friday the 13th,” despite that phrase having no tie-in at all to the original screenplay, proved to be a stroke of marketing genius. Cunningham advertised the film with the distinct and memorable title long before it was ready for debut, causing excitement and anticipation for the unlikely hit.
- 9123 VOTES
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Premise: After convenience store clerk Dante fills in at work at the last minute, his friend, who works at the video rental store next door, decides to keep him company. Though it seems like an average day, some unexpected bad news leaves Dante questioning his love life.
Budget: $27,000
Box Office: $3 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Clerks manages to make a hit film with very little action - the run time is largely dedicated to aimless conversations between friends. Director Kevin Smith actually worked at the Quick Stop where the movie was filmed and perfectly documented the everyday struggles of being a cashier in a convenience store in the mid-'90s. Instead of following a strict schedule with a predetermined script, Smith allowed the actors to create the random dialogue of topics that often come up between groups of friends on a slow day at work. This straightforward approach, along with Smith's uncanny ability to capture his daily life (and the life of many other young Americans of the era) on film, made the flick endearing and relatable to the audience.
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Premise: Enjoying their last night of summer as kids, 1962 Central Valley California high school graduates spend their time cruising and drag-racing before they go their separate ways.
Budget: $750,000
Box Office: $115 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? In American Grafitti, director George Lucas perfectly captures the nostalgic feeling of a night out with friends by telling the tale through mostly light-hearted comedy and friendly banter. At the same time, the film emphasizes that underlying feeling of finality that anyone who's gone through any significant coming-of-age can easily recognize. Set in 1962, its underlying tones of melancholy and the rudimentary stirred the hearts of viewers in 1973 as they yearned for the nostalgic times of a less complicated past.
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Premise: As corpses begin to awaken and threaten to take over the entire portion of the Northeastern United States, a group of Pennsylvanians band together by barricading themselves in a farmhouse to escape impending doom.
Budget: $114,000
Box Office: $5 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Night of the Living Dead captured the moody and expressive environment that encapsulated culture in the 1960s with its slow-moving, flesh-eating ghouls that, while not called “zombies” in this film, are generally credited with codifying many of the popular tropes seen in modern zombie movies. As former humans ruthlessly attack, even the uninfected start to lose grip on their humanity, turning on each other for the sake of survival. Audiences connected with the raw emotional rollercoaster created through suspense and fear, and though the special effects are quite simple, they're effective.
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Premise: An aspiring musician's world is turned upside down when he is mistaken for a notorious killer wanted by a drug lord.
Budget: $7,000
Box Office: $2 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? When Robert Rodriguez first set out to make El Mariachi, he intended the Spanish thriller to be marketed first to Spanish home video audiences. Then, if the story went over well with his target market, he could remake it on a larger budget with the help of a major production company. Instead, the film became highly regarded in LA circles, and Rodriguez landed a deal with Columbia Pictures. The major studio opted to keep the film exactly as Rodriguez had filmed it, leading to the monumental success on a meager budget.
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Premise: What begins as a routine dive turns deadly as a couple finds themselves stranded 20 miles from shore in shark-infested waters.
Budget: $500,000
Box Office: $54.6 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Directed and produced by husband and wife diving team Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, the plot of Open Water seemed so realistic because it was based on a true story. While shark films have held their grip on the horror genre for decades, this 2003 flick set itself apart by loosely adapting the narrative around the actual 1998 disappearances of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who vanished after exploring shark-infested waters off of Queensland, Australia.
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Premise: A street performer and an immigrant create romance and music together as they chronicle their time in Dublin, Ireland, through song.
Budget: $150,000
Box Office: $20.9 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? With a modest budget and relatively unknown actors, the film came across as an ordinary and intimate love story. While these features may have created some of the Once's success through its believability, the humble yet striking soundtrack was what really set the musical apart from other films. Instead of highly choreographed dances and scenes filled with props, the film focused solely on the act of making music. It even nabbed the Academy Award for Best Original song for “Falling Slowly.”
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Premise: In a hallucinatory tale of the horrors of parenthood, wild-haired Henry Spencer's experiences grow increasingly stranger after he finds out that he and his girlfriend, Mary, have a baby - except it's definitely not a normal baby.
Budget: $10,000
Box Office: $25 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Director David Lynch initially presented a 21-page script for Eraserhead to investors, leading them to assume they were funding a short film at most, not a wildly creepy feature-length project. Lynch and the cast members worked on the project for four years under modest means to create what eventually became a cult classic that formed an entirely new mold of psychological thriller. The film became buzz-worthy as the go-to midnight screening destination for artists, film students, and stoners, leading the film to earn $25 million.
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Premise: A mathematical genius experiencing paranoia obsessively searches for the collection of numbers that represent nature's universal patterns.
Budget: $60,000
Box Office: $3.2 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Released in the early years of widespread internet usage, Pi presented information concerning mathematics and Jewish mysticism in a way that had never previously been available to the public in masse. As it exposed how mathematics can expand the mind, it resonated with math enthusiasts as it made the study seem cool. The heavily conceptual nature of the thriller struck a chord with audiences for how unique it was in the movie market.
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Premise: A young Black woman living in Brooklyn explores her sexuality with three lovers.
Budget: $175,000
Box Office: $7.1 million
Why Was It Such An Unexpected Success? Spike Lee's first movie, She's Gotta Have It, explores feminism and African American sexuality in a way that had never before been captured through film. Lee's treatment of the lead character, Nola, celebrating her confidence and sensuality, was a striking contrast to the film's title, artfully enticed audiences to broaden their perspectives. Additionally, Lee's strong visual sense as a director is immediately clear from beautifully framed shots, as well as the choice to have the entire film in black and white except for one memorable scene in full color.
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