Paranormal Activity = MOST Profitable Movie EVER!

YAHOO has reported that the ever SO low budget movie, Paranormal Activity has become the MOST profitable movie ever made. As of Wednesday October 28, the $15,000 budgeted movie has made a staggering 65.1 million dollars. When you break it down, the movie has made 414,233 percent return on it's initial investment. WOW!!!

IB,

Those numbers are deceptive.

The initial cost was around $10,000 to $15,000. However, the director had to spend a bit more flying around the country showing it at various festivals. Let's say he spent another $5,000 doing that for a total of $20,000.

Paramount/DreamWorks bought the movie rights for $300,000. It probably spent another $1 mil to $5 mil to market the thing and another $2 mil to create film prints. Let's combine these costs to a total of $4.5 mil.

Spielberg saw this movie on tape and requested Paramount/DreamWorks to acquire it. His name might not be listed anywhere, but he prolly gets 1% of everything just for "discovering" the movie.

Movie companies only get half of the theatrical revenue (the other half goes to the theatres that actually show the movies). So, so far, Paramount has taken back about $30 mil. You take out the $4.5 mil that Paramount spent and Spielberg's 1% of everything (probably around $2 mil when all is said and done), and the profits don't look so rosy.

Apparently the studio is trying to get a second Paranormal movie made. Don't know if it's been signed off or not though.

Have any of you seen this movie? Is it any good?

It's all build up for the final 30 seconds or so, Falcon. I was quite bored by the two dopes who do nothing to help themselves.

You say you want a review? Fine. I think either Chris or Tim did one here, too.

Jason

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[Post edited by JJ79 on Oct 30, 2009 - CDT 3:02 PM]

Before I make my comment on Paranormal Activity you should know that I very much liked The Blair Witch.

SPOILERS: SPOILERS: SPOILERS: SPOILERS: SPOILERS:

I saw "Paranormal Activity" last week, hoping that it would be a good scary movie, at least. I was horribly disappointed. The only reason I could see that this movie was rated R, was the overuse of the F-word. Not that an R rating makes or breaks a scary movie. M. Night Shayamalan has proved that with his PG-13 scary movies.

The acting was only OK, and in that it was shot in documentary style, you can't say much about the camera work. I will say that the camera setup in the "sleeping" scenes was pretty well placed for a scary setting. I will hand it to their sound engineers for creating some pretty scary sound effects, and the scene where "Katie" is dragged out of bed and down the hall screaming by the unseen demon, was about the scariest part of the entire movie. I must say, that scene was done well. The climax of the movie was done fairly decently as well, however, the payoff at the end (which is what "broke" the movie for me) was completely contrived, and almost a direct ripoff of The Blair Witch .

The very end of the movie where its giving a written account of the following days and weeks, was completely childish and reminded me of when I was in 4th grade and a friend ends a scary story with "AND THEY WERE NEVER.... SEEN.... AGAIN!!"

And this is supposed to be "The scariest movie of all time!"? Please! I think classic movies from the 70's and 80's like Halloween, Friday The 13th, and Nightmare On Elm Street were (and still are) leaps and bounds scarier than Paranormal Activity.



- Josh

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[Post edited by NachtDerKriecher on Oct 30, 2009 - CDT 2:20 PM]

the scariest movie of all time is "about schmidt", especially when kathy bates takes off her clothes!!!

ROTFL. Awesome, Eddie.

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It's all build up for the final 30 seconds or so

The final 30 seconds were laugh out loud funny. What a shame they went such a cheap, silly route after some of the good work done earlier in the movie.



It's nice for the studio to have a metric that enables them to claim it's the most profitable movie ever. But measuring it as % return is pretty silly when you're dealing with such low numbers. If the movie cost $50,000 and made $100,000 it would be a lot more profitable than on the $11,000 budget and $60 million box office it has now. If a movie was made for 5 cents and grossed $100,000 it wouldn't be the most profitable movie ever either.

"Blair Witch" was made for $60,000 and grossed $140 mill. That's certainly more profitable than "Paranormal." Of course "Paranormal" still has a ways to go and has incredibly strong legs so it could/should break $100 million.

In any case, it's obviously an extremely profitable film. But the "most profitable" thing is just a marketing line.

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Movie companies only get half of the theatrical revenue (the other half goes to the theatres that actually show the movies). So, so far, Paramount has taken back about $30 mil. You take out the $4.5 mil that Paramount spent and Spielberg's 1% of everything (probably around $2 mil when all is said and done), and the profits don't look so rosy.

Nikki Finke is reporting P'mount spent under $15 mil for advertising and prints.

HALLOWEEN HORROR! Michael Jackson's 'This Is It' Still Disappoints With $7.5M Friday (But It's More Popular Overseas) 'Paranormal Activity' Still Thrills With $6M

Jason

Finally saw this last night and it was ok. Some creepy moments but nothing crazy. One question though, in the trailer there's a scene where the boyfriend gets thrown towards the camera in the bedroom. I didn't see that in the movie. Did any of you guys see it? Was it cut out or did I miss it?

It was a fun flick to watch on Halloween weekend.