Low Budget Movies That Totally Cleaned Up At The Box Office
Zombies, strippers, and Mel Gibson... No matter who they starred, these low-budget films surprised people and broke records and box office records.
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00:00Zombies, strippers, and Mel Gibson. No matter who they starred,
00:05these low-budget films surprised people and broke box office records.
00:10An adaptation of the popular John Green novel, the weepy teen romance The Fault in Our Stars
00:16became a budget blockbuster, toppling a number of flashier new releases in June 2014.
00:22A tragic love story starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort as terminally ill teens,
00:28The Fault in Our Stars opened against the Tom Cruise-led sci-fi action flick Edge of Tomorrow
00:33and the second weekend of Disney's Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie.
00:37It still somehow managed to win its weekend by a significant margin.
00:42Both of the pricier projects eventually outgrossed the underdog romance,
00:46but given that they each cost over ten times more to produce,
00:50The Fault in Our Stars turned out to be the more prosperous investment
00:53and one of the most profitable movies of the year.
00:56The Fault in Our Stars raked in $307 million in worldwide box office
01:01and another $43 million in U.S. DVD and Blu-ray sales, all on a budget of about $12 million.
01:08This is evidence of how much the movie business has changed over the past decade. Today,
01:12young adult novel adaptations without any wizards or weird dystopias seem to have
01:17straight-to-streaming written all over them. But before the outbreak of the streaming wars,
01:22studios could still count on the occasional low-budget gamble to pay off big and cover
01:27the cost of a dozen small future projects. In the modern movie landscape, movies like
01:32The Fault in Our Stars simply don't get the opportunity to surprise us at the box office.
01:38Welcome to East High."
01:39High School Musical is a rare example of a blockbuster TV movie
01:43debuting on cable and then selling like wildfire on home video. In 2006,
01:48the musical comedy set a record for the most-viewed premiere in the history of the Disney
01:53Channel, but that was only a precursor for its massive multimedia commercial success.
01:58Six months later, Disney released the movie on DVD and reported 1.2 million
02:03sales in its first week on the shelves. It's estimated that High School Musical
02:08grossed over $131 million in DVD sales in the United States alone. It was the very first feature
02:15film to go on sale in its entirety on iTunes, as well as the first TV soundtrack ever to hit
02:20number one on the Billboard pop chart, according to Playbill. High School Musical has since become
02:25a hugely profitable franchise. High School Musical 2 grossed $93 million on DVD, and High School
02:31Musical 3, senior year, made the leap to theaters, where it brought home $274 million worldwide.
02:39The movie itself has been adapted for the stage, leading to High School Musical,
02:44the musical, the series, a mockumentary series on Disney Plus about high school students putting
02:49on the stage musical based on the movie. In 2021, Variety estimated that, within five years of its
02:55debut, the High School Musical franchise had grossed $4 billion in retail sales. And what
03:02was the production budget for the first High School Musical? Disney's initial investment
03:07in this monster franchise? $4.2 million. We'll call that a passing grade.
03:13There are a few subjects that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tend to eat up
03:18like candy, chief among them being British royals and World War II. Tom Hooper's The King's Speech
03:24gave them a dose of both, telling the true story of Britain's King George VI, whose stutter was
03:29an obstacle to his duties as the figurehead of a nation creeping towards war. It's a character
03:34drama, mostly centered on the relationship between George, his family — including Helena Bonham
03:39Carter as Queen Elizabeth — and the Australian actor who serves as his speech therapist.
03:44An independent production working with a budget of about $15 million,
03:48The King's Speech dominated the British box office upon its release in 2010,
03:53and gradually picked up steam in the U.S. during the 2011 awards season. By the end of its long,
03:58theatrical run, it accumulated a worldwide gross of just under $424 million, and the Oscar for
04:06Best Picture. It also lent major credibility to director Tom Hooper, who would later helm the
04:11disastrous 2019 film adaptation of the stage musical Cats. The lesson here? Just because
04:17a filmmaker can achieve commercial and critical success using $15 million, doesn't mean you
04:22should give him $95 million to invest in digital fur technology.
04:28Love means never having to say you're sorry."
04:30Interest in Arthur Hiller's 1970 romantic tragedy Love Story was seeded by a novel
04:36adaptation of the screenplay being written and released while the film was still in production.
04:41The book was a smash hit, and so was the film that followed, grossing $136 million
04:46in the worldwide box office — the equivalent of $1 billion after inflation. Close your eyes
04:53and imagine a college romance making Avengers money in 2022. It feels impossible. While we
04:59can't account for how much was spent to promote Love Story — after all, the marketing of the
05:03novel should surely be considered part of the film's advertising budget — the American Film
05:08Institute reports that about $2.26 million was spent to produce the film, less than 2 percent
05:14of its eventual box office gross. No cinematic legend has a more humble beginning than Mad Max,
05:21an Australian micro-budget film directed by medical doctor-turned-filmmaker George Miller
05:27and starring a bunch of unknown and amateur actors. The production and release of the
05:321979 post-apocalyptic revenge movie was an uphill battle on every level. It was shot
05:38over six weeks on highways that were closed for filming without permits, populated with
05:42real-life outlaw bikers using their own equipment and wardrobe, edited on homemade equipment,
05:48and banned upon release in neighboring New Zealand. Nevertheless, Mad Max performed well
05:53commercially in its native country of Australia and became an international cult classic,
05:58accumulating nearly $100 million in global box office receipts.
06:03The profit margin on Mad Max is almost too large to believe, with the entire production costing
06:09only about $200,000, meaning that the film grossed nearly 500 times its budget. The film's success
06:16launched the careers of both director George Miller and star Mel Gibson, and the pair reunited
06:21for two increasingly expensive sequels, Mad Max 2, The Road Warrior in 1981, and Mad Max Beyond
06:28Thunderdome in 1985. Miller would then move on to a wider variety of projects such as The Witches
06:34of Eastwick, Babe, Big in the City, and Happy Feet. When Miller returned to the franchise with
06:40Mad Max Fury Road in 2015, it was a critical success and a cultural sensation, winning six
06:47Academy Awards and grossing $389 million. Of course, it was on a budget of $150 million,
06:54one and a half times the cumulative gross of the original film. The franchise continues to expand,
07:00with the hotly anticipated prequel Furiosa all on the backs of a small
07:04guerrilla production and a budget of under a quarter of a million dollars.
07:09Hey, Mike! Hey, man. Yo! What's going on? What's going on, bro?
07:15Magic Mike is loosely based on star Channing Tatum's real life as a stripper in Tampa,
07:20Florida. It's a sordid, steamy, and surprisingly sobering coming-of-age story brought to life by
07:26master director Steven Soderbergh, balancing the over-the-top eroticism of the stripper's night
07:32lives with the quiet and complicated details of their personal relationships. Released in the
07:36summer of June 2012 as perfect counter-programming against Seth MacFarlane's Ted, Magic Mike never
07:43hit the top of the box office, but had staying power throughout the summer. It accumulated a
07:48worldwide gross of $167 million on a budget of just $7 million. The film's success led to an
07:55even bigger sequel, Magic Mike XXL, a stage show, a reality spin-off series, and in 2023's series
08:03capping feature, Magic Mike's Last Dance.
08:06Shinichiro Ueda's One Cut of the Dead is a nesting doll of great gimmicks.
08:12In this action-horror-comedy, a small crew is in the midst of making a low-budget zombie movie
08:17when an actual zombie apocalypse suddenly begins. For 37 minutes, we follow the bloody slapstick
08:23antics of the actors, director, and company as they attempt to survive the disaster,
08:28presented via one uninterrupted take. After that, things get even more wild,
08:33but not in the way you might expect. One Cut of the Dead has grossed $27.5 million worldwide,
08:40which doesn't sound like very much until you consider its shoestring budget of 2.5 million
08:46yen, about 23,000 U.S. dollars. It was produced by film school Enbu Seminar as basically a student
08:53film which the student actors actually paid to perform, per Variety. Its success beyond its
08:58local theatrical run took everyone by surprise, eventually leading to it recouping its budget over
09:031,000 times over. The scrappy success of One Cut led French director Michel Aznavichus,
09:10who won an Academy Award for the artist, to create a remake called Final Cut. Despite,
09:15or perhaps because of, its much larger budget of $4 million, the new version failed to reproduce
09:21the charm of the original. With the Oscars gradually becoming less relevant to the movie-going
09:27public, the Academy Award for Best Picture is not quite the measuring stick for greatness that
09:32it used to be. The 21st century has seen several underwhelming winners like Green Book, Argo,
09:37and Crash, to name a few. It seems almost miraculous when the Academy crowns a worthy
09:43champion. So imagine the gleeful surprise amongst cinephiles worldwide when Bong Joon-ho's Parasite,
09:50already the winner of 2019's Palme d'Or and an overwhelming critical favorite,
09:54became the first non-English-language film ever to take home Best Picture.
09:59A Best Picture win or nomination reliably lends a boost to a film's theatrical attendance in
10:04the United States, as curious moviegoers attempt to see as many candidates as possible before
10:09Oscar night. And Parasite was no exception. Parasite's domestic box office draw took a
10:14sizable jump after the Oscar nominations were announced, and another after its Best Picture
10:20win. That added up to a healthy $53 million domestic and $262 million worldwide gross.
10:27Parasite isn't the highest-grossing Best Picture of its era, but it is one of the
10:31most profitable. Made with a budget of about $11 million, Parasite made its money back
10:3723 times over, not counting streaming and television rights.
10:41Next to no one saw pitch-perfect smash commercial success coming, but frankly,
10:46we probably should have. This Anna Kendrick-starring comedy about the misadventures
10:50of a college a cappella group was released in 2012 during the height of glee fever,
10:56and between that television comedy and the array of rival singing competitions on broadcast
11:01television.
11:01Hi, any interest in joining our a cappella group?
11:05Oh, right. This is like a thing now.
11:08Oh, totes.
11:09The atmosphere was so saturated with singing that Universal Pictures had actually put
11:14pitch-perfect on their backburner for years out of fear that they might burst the bubble
11:18or the ringer. It was only after the phenomenal success of the ensemble comedy Bridesmaids
11:23that the studio committed to the project with a modest $17 million budget.
11:27Pitch-perfect opened to a limited release in late September, up against Hotel Transylvania
11:32and Looper. Positive reviews and word of mouth assured that the film would climb from number
11:37six to number three at the box office when it expanded to theaters nationwide the following
11:42weekend, actually leapfrogging Looper and besting the weekend's big Disney animated
11:47release, Frankenweenie. By the time it completed its theatrical run, Pitch-perfect had grossed
11:52$115 million worldwide. Its success was followed by two sequels with increasingly larger budgets
11:58and a cumulative box office haul of $588 million. The Pitch-perfect franchise continues to rock on
12:06with the Peacock streaming series Pitch-perfect, Bumper in Berlin, out now.
12:12Director Danny Boyle has frequently made a lot out of a little, with his low-budget dark comedy
12:17Trainspotting becoming a cult classic and his grim and bloody 28 Days Later winning back its
12:23$8 million budget ten times over. His biggest commercial success, however, came in 2008 with
12:29the release of Slumdog Millionaire, an independently financed drama about a young man accused of
12:34cheating to win on a game show. In addition to winning the Academy Award for Best Picture
12:39and launching the international career of star Dev Patel, Slumdog Millionaire grossed $378 million
12:46worldwide, all off of a budget of only $15 million. At the time of its release, it was the highest
12:52grossing independent film in the history of the British movie industry, though it was eventually
12:57dethroned by The King's Speech. You might imagine that the film being set in India, home to one of
13:02the world's biggest film industries and a film-loving culture, would be a major contributor
13:06to its global box office success. However, you'd be imagining incorrectly. While a big hit in many
13:12other international markets, Slumdog Millionaire was not as well-received in India, where critics
13:17and audiences were displeased with the film's portrayal of their country as impoverished and
13:22corrupt. Some Indians were justifiably displeased when a movie copying some of their style but made
13:28by an English filmmaker was hailed as a worldwide sensation, while British and American audiences
13:33continued to overlook the Indian movies from which it drew influence.