13 Very Profitable Movies That Made 100 Times Their Budget at the Box Office

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

These days, a phenomenon like The Blair Witch Project would be almost impossible, 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.