10 Great Low Budget Movies Which Cleaned Up At The Box Office

5. Napoleon Dynamite

Like the horror genre, comedy doesn't inherently require a large budget for the film to work - being funny doesn't cost any money, after all, and as long as the characters are well written and the gags come thick and fast a great comedy can be made on a shoestring budget. At least that's the theory. One comedy which was a huge success in this regard was Napoleon Dynamite, the 2004 film directed by Jared Hess and starring Jon Heder in the title role, a mumbling, awkward high school student with a secret talent for dancing. Quirky and idiosyncratic, Napoleon Dynamite certainly isn't everybody's cup of tea, but for those of us who like our comedy off-beat and driven by eccentric yet strangely believable characters it's one of the finest American indie movies of the 2000s. Vote for Pedro. Budget: $400,000 Box office: $46.1 million