12 Movies That Made 100 Times Their Budget at the Box Office

Among the highest-grossing films of all time you’ll find megahits like Avatar and Avengers: Endgame. They movies made billions of dollars worldwide.

But those numbers are less impressive when you consider the costs to make them. Endgame, for example, reportedly cost somewhere between $350 and $400 million to make.

The following films were made for next to nothing, compared to the massive amounts they earned.

These days, a phenomenon like The Blair Witch Project would be almost impossible to muster, and the social media chatter around such a movie would be largely unbearable. It’s not the first found-footage horror film, but it helped take the concept to new heights commercially and bolstered a doubling down on the style going forward.

All the marketing posited that The Blair Witch Project was a documentary, not a work of fiction. The actors, all unknown, were posited as real missing/presumed dead. It helped that the internet was starting to grow significantly in 1999, helping to market the movie as well. In time, it would become clear that it was a work of fiction, though in truth the whole “witch” part should have been a giveaway.

Nevertheless, the phenomenon brought in $248.6 million worldwide off of a budget that came in under $1 million.

Mad Max: Fury Road cost somewhere between $150 and $185 million to make, but George Miller took quite the journey to get there. Before he could make one of the quintessential bombastic action films, he was a guy making experimental short films.

Made on the cheap, Mad Max is much grittier and less baroque than the later films in the series. You know, the ones with money. Miller made his film in his native Australia, and cast an unknown actor named Mel Gibson in the lead role. Mad Max was made for A$400,000, which is to say 400,000 Australian dollars.

These days, that would be equivalent to a little over $250,000. Speaking of American currency, Mad Max has made $100 million on that front. Not only is it on our list of movies that made 100 times their budget, but it also spawned a franchise that continues next month with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

We could have done a list just of horror films that qualified for this list. Halloween is already the second, and there will be a couple more we felt we should include, but we aimed for variety. That being said, Halloween had to be included, because John Carpenter helped change horror movies. Also, it still rips as far as horror movies go.

The idea that Halloween invented the slasher film has been bandied about by some in the past, which isn’t true. Bob Clark’s Black Christmas predates it, as do some Italian horror films. Halloween did popularize the genre in America, though, and did help codify some of the elements.

Also, it made a ton of money. Carpenter’s film cost something around $300,000 to make, but it would end up making $70 million worldwide.

Many hit documentaries could make this list of list of movies that made 100 times their budget, as documentaries don’t tend to cost a lot of money. To represent the genre, we’re going with one of the most-famous docs, and also one that provided particular bang for the buck. That would be Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me.

Coming out of the “stunt documentary” subgenre, Spurlock, just a random dude, ate only McDonald’s for a month to see what it did to his health. It got a lot of people talking, changed some minds about fast food, and basically ended the Super Size option at McDonald’s, and similar options elsewhere. Oh, and it made a ton of money.

Off of a budget of $65,000, it made $22 million.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is both a proto-slasher and a proto-found footage horror movie. It was positioned as being based on a true story, though it wasn’t, as a criticism of sensationalistic “if it bleeds, it leads” news of the era. On top of that, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is arguably a top-10 movie title of all-time, and the tagline, “Who will survive and what will be left of them?” is also an all-timer.

Tobe Hooper’s film was made on the cheap, which you can do when your biggest special effect is, you know, a chainsaw. The movie was made for less than $140,000, with some estimates as low as $80,000. It would make $30.9 million, a huge return on that investment, and influence generations of horror directors to come.

Gone with the Wind was a massive phenomenon. The sweeping epic won Best Picture at the Oscars, but it was also a huge hit. It remains, to date, the highest-grossing film ever adjusting for inflation. Adjusted to 2022 numbers, it made the equivalent of $4.2 billion dollars. This is a fun bit of trivia, but we did not get into inflation adjustments for this list, because it was not pertinent (and also because we would have spent so much time laying those details out and your eyes would have glazed over).

Yeah, the story of Scarlett and Rhett and a bunch of rich Southerners was a sensation. Of course, back in 1939, there was no TV, and also you could only see a movie in theaters. We did not have to adjust for inflation to include Gone with the Wind, either. It cost $3.85 million, which in 1939 was not cheap.

While the exact box office numbers are not provided with the same accuracy as these days, it is reported to have brought in over $390 million. That is staggering. We aren’t signing off on everything depicted in the movie, but this old-school blockbuster represents a different kind of movie that made 100 times its budget.

Star Wars made George Lucas an icon. That movie birthed an empire (in multiple ways) and made $775.4 million on a budget of $11 million. How did Lucas help earn the chance to bring his space opera to life, though? Because, a few years earlier, he had another big success in American Graffiti.

Laying the groundwork for Happy Days, American Graffiti is a coming-of-age tale set in 1962. It’s built upon driving around in cars, trying to get some sexual action going, and listening to Wolfman Jack. In the cast you will find, among others, Ron Howard and Richard Dreyfuss, plus a small role for a carpenter named Harrison Ford. American Graffiti struck a chord with audiences. Made for only $770,000 it made $140 million, and also earned five Oscar nominations.

So yeah, that’s how Lucas got to make Star Wars — by breaking out by making one of the rare movies that made 100 times their budget.

What if you took the lessons of Halloween, but turned them into something nastier and more prurient? Well, you don’t get a stone-cold classic, but you do get a bit hit — and another of those horror movies that made 100 times their budget.

Friday the 13th became the foremost slasher series in the United States, never artistically minded, but always delivering what it promised.

Kudos to director Sean S. Cunningham, who bought an ad in Variety in 1979 basically telling studios, “Hey, did you like Halloween? Then check out what I’ve got cooking!” You probably know by now that Jason Vorhees isn’t the killer in the first movie, and that a young Kevin Bacon had a role. What you may not know is that Friday the 13th was made for $550,000 and made $59.8 million.

The title Napoleon Dynamite could have turned people off. You could say that about the unusual aesthetic as well, or the cast of largely unknowns, or…a lot of data points seemed to point to Napoleon Dynamite being a total shrug. Instead, it became one of the foremost cult classics of the 2000s — and one of the comedy movies that made 100 times their budget.

Jared Hess shot the film in his native Idaho, and cast his college buddy Jon Heder in the league role. Napoleon is a specific character. Everything about Napoleon Dynamite is a bit off, and certainly some find it alienating. We didn’t say the movie became the highest-grossing film in history. It did make $46.1 million worldwide, though, and that was for a film that cost $400,000 to make.

Alright, one last horror film. We wanted to include Paranormal Activity because it basically built the career of producer Jason Blum, and also kicked off a series of imitators trying to make a ton of money off of basically no budget. It’s with Paranormal Activity that studios seemed to really recognize that horror fans are less picky than fans of other genres, and that the movies tend to be fairly cheap to make.

It’s a found footage movie shot with a stationary home video camera. Seriously, it could not be more lo-fi. Oren Peli’s initial production cost a mere $15,000, though once Paramount signed on they asked for a bit of a glow up, and a new ending, that cost $215,000.

Even so, Paranormal Activity was a horror hit, making $194.2 million and generating several sequels. It’s like the scary poster child for movies that made 100 times their budget.

The power of a song. Once became an unexpected hit thanks to the soundtrack, specifically the song “Falling Slowly.” The movie, set in Ireland, follows two unnamed musicians who meet, make music, and seemingly fall in unrequited love. Among the songs they write in the film is “Falling Slowly.”

That song would go on to win Best Original Song at the Oscars. It would rise to 61 on the Billboard Hot 100. Once only cost $150,000 to make, as it is quite a small story (with big emotions). The film made $23.3 million, but will also always have that Academy Award.

It’s falling slowly…. onto our list of movies that made 100 times their budget.

Speaking of the Academy Awards, we end with, fittingly, an underdog story. That is true of Rocky Balboa, but also the movie Rocky. Sylvester Stallone would go on to be one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and the Rocky sequels would get so over-the-top Rocky basically ends the Cold War in the fourth one. Back in the mid-1970s, though, Stallone was a struggling actor. He wrote Rocky, hoping to earn a nice role for himself, the journey there was as notable as the Italian Stallion’s.

First, ABC bought it to turn it into a made-for-TV movie, but they wanted to hire writers for rewrites, so Stallone’s Lords of Flatbush co-star Henry Winkler used his Happy Days cache to manage to get them to sell him the rights back. Stallone took it to United Artists, which wanted to make it, but as a vehicle for an established star. Stallone and his agents said he would star or nobody would.

The studio said fine, but in turn only gave the film a budget of about $1 million. Cut to Rocky winning Best Picture for 1976 while making $225 million at the box office. Yo, Adrian. He did it.

You may also enjoy this list of the 13 Weirdest Movies We’ve Ever Seen…. 

… or this list of the 13 Funniest Movies We’ve Ever Seen, which includes Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, above. It isn’t on the list of movies that made 100 times their budget, but it did make us laugh a lot.

Main image: Friday the 13th. Paramount.