10 Movies Made With Shockingly Low Budgets
2. The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project is one of those iconic films that helped to define a genre. In this case, it's the "found footage" genre that permeated Hollywood for years following the film's release. No movie was able to capture the same level of success The Blair Witch Project had, which makes it somewhat unique.
The film only cost $60,000 to make, and considering it made a whopping $249 million at the global box office, it's easy to see why other films failed to match up. The movie actually stole the award for Most Profitable Film from Mad Max and has retained it since that time.
The main reasons The Blair Witch Project cost so little to make is due to the use of just a 35-page script, which required much of the dialogue to be improvised, a nonexistent location budget (they literally went out into the woods and filmed it), no wardrobe costs, and shooting via Hi8 video cameras.
In addition to the insanely low production costs, the marketing for the film was done in such a way as to cost almost nothing, but it managed to reach a massive audience by going viral. All-told, The Blair Witch Project stands as one of the most successful film projects in history.