Paranormal Activity Has Become the Most Profitable Movie Ever
With a budget of just $15,000, and it piling up box office cash, this isn’t a huge surprise I guess. Back when The Blair Witch Project came out on a similar budget, using the “real person” strategy as their actors, as well as cheap video equipment to film it, a new age was born. Of course no one else was able to replicate it quite like Blair Witch had, until Paranormal Activity.
As a movie, Paranormal Activity isn’t the greatest thing I ever saw. If you watched any of the “alternate” endings out there that were replaced you should be quite happy they replaced them. They were crap. Not saying I particularly enjoyed the theatrical one either, but it was miles better. Let’s just say that I don’t deem this movie as a classic, and I thought Blair Witch was way better at the time I saw it even if people think it is cool to say it sucked. It was just a better atmosphere and had more fear factors going for it. Paranormal activity did have an annoying, and idiot character like Blair Witch all the same.
So…at this point Paranormal Activity has grossed roughly $65 million on its $15K investment for a guy that probably couldn’t even get affordable health insurance when the movie was released. A return of 434,000 percent. The next closest you can probably figure it out from the way this post started. The next closest competitor is 1999′s “The Blair Witch Project,” another indie horror flick. With a production budget of $60,000, that movie posted a 414,000 percent return.
Both films did a similar marketing strategy of promoting the movies in sort of an underground way. While PA had the benefit of a much more established internet audience, Blair Witch actually had many believing that it was a true story, with actual film footage before its release.
So kids…if you want to take $10K investment and get rich, making a movie might be the way to do it. Of course it probably needs to be a horror movie, and you probably need to have some talent 
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