10 Movies That Smashed The Box Office With A Totally Unknown Cast

7. Cloverfield

Cloverfield is notable for all sorts of reasons, not least combining the 'found footage' format, typically associated with horror films, with the monster movie genre. At the same time this is one of the rare 'found footage' films with the involvement of a big name producer - at least in hindsight - with JJ Abrams heavily involved in the process. The surprising hit featured no recognisable actors and not a single one of its cast had featured in a major Hollywood role until this point. This is, of course, one of the major ploys of this type of film - put together a cast of relative unknowns and the audience are more likely to swallow the idea that this stuff really happened! It turns out the audience must have got into the spirit of things because it made a very respectable $175m at the box office - an excellent return of an outlay of just $25m. Even better was that this was a very strong film in its own right, regardless of the much maligned genre it belongs to. The shaky cam conceals the creature from the viewer for as long as possible and really does lead to a sense of dread as we wonder what the hell this thing is.