Low-Budget Movies That Actually Made A Ton Of Money

If you look at the list of the top grossing films of all time, you'll find mostly big budget blockbusters, movies that cost $100 or $200 million but managed to make somewhere around $1 billion. These huge films are risky bets for studios, with the potential to bring in big bucks — but also the potential to lose a massive chunk of change.

This means that studios are even more lucky when they find a low budget unicorn, a movie that becomes a surprise hit. If you go further down the list of those top grossing films, you'll find some of these movies, which were made for less than $10 million but still managed to gross more than $100 million thanks to positive critical reception, awards season buzz, and innovative marketing and release strategies. Here are some low-budget movies that actually wound up making a ton of money at the box office.

George Lucas went on to make big box office bucks with the Star Wars franchise, but before he went to a galaxy far, far away, he went to Modesto, California for his coming-of-age drama American Graffiti. At the time, Lucas was a fairly unknown director and he had a hard time getting financing for the project. 

Universal eventually agreed to make the movie with just a $750,000 budget. However, they still conflicted with Lucas' vision, asking him to hire a new editor and recut the film after he turned in the finished product. The studio was worried about releasing the film in theaters, but building buzz from employees who had seen and loved the film eventually convinced them.

Despite the movie's troubles making it to the big screen, it wound up being remarkably well received, earning five Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Director for Lucas. The film was immensely popular at the box office as well, pulling in $115 million, making it the 15th highest-grossing PG-rated film of all time when adjusted for inflation. 

Annabelle didn't buck the negative reviews many horror movies face, but the $6.5 million creepy doll film made a killing at the box office. The movie very, very narrowly lost to David Fincher's Gone Girl in its opening weekend, but still managed to pull in an impressive $37.1 million. (Gone Girl, which went on to earn an Oscar nomination for its star Rosamund Pike, made just $378,854 more in its opener.) 

Annabelle's strong opening bucked initial $20 million expectations, at least in part thanks to the movie's popularity on social media. The movie also had the benefit of being spawned from another popular, low budget horror franchise: the Conjuring franchise, which came from horror maven James Wan. The movie went on to make an impressive $257 million worldwide, including $84.2 million domestic. 

A prequel for the movie, titled Annabelle: Creation, was released in the summer of 2017 and was met with a much more positive response from critics. That film got a slightly higher $15 million budget and still proved to be an impressive box office force, making $306.5 million worldwide including $102 million domestic. The movie wound up being one of the few bright spots in a dismal summer box office, proving the power of well-done horror.

The found-footage horror film The Blair Witch Project wasn't just a cultural phenomenon — it was also a box office hit. The 1999 film about a group of student filmmakers who hunt down a local urban legend was made for just $60,000 but went on to make $246.8 million at the worldwide box office, including $140.5 million domestic. This is even more impressive when considering that the film was shot in just eight days, with a partially improvised script. 

Like many of the movies on this list, The Blair Witch Project benefitted from an innovative release schedule, rolling out slowly to build buzz. The movie was screened at the Sundance Film Festival without much fanfare, and audiences were left wondering if they'd just seen a horror movie or an actual documentary. Building on this excitement, filmmakers used a viral marketing campaign — one of the first to be located mainly on the Internet — to build buzz while still keeping the film mysterious. 

While many horror movies have tried to copy The Blair Witch Project's innovative formula, they have met varying degrees of success. The movie still holds the title for the highest-grossing found footage horror film of all time, and it is also the fourth highest grossing R-rated horror movie of all time. 

An adaptation of the popular John Green novel, weepy teen romance "The Fault in Our Stars" became a budget blockbuster, toppling a number of flashier new releases in June 2014. A tragic love story starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort as terminally ill teens, "The Fault in Our Stars" opened against the Tom Cruise-led sci-fi action flick "Edge of Tomorrow" and the second weekend of Disney's "Maleficent" starring Angelina Jolie, and yet it still managed to win its weekend by a significant margin. Both of the pricier projects eventually outgrossed the underdog romance, but given that they each cost over ten times more to produce, "The Fault in Our Stars" turned out to be the more prosperous investment and one of the most profitable movies of the year.

According to entertainment finance tracker The Numbers, "The Fault in Our Stars" raked in $307 million in worldwide box office and another $43 million in US DVD and Blu-ray sales, all on a budget of about $12 million. This is evidence of how much the movie business has changed over the past decade. Today, young adult novel adaptations without any wizards or weird dystopias seem to have "straight to streaming" written all over them, but before the outbreak of the "Streaming Wars," studios could still count on the occasional low-budget gamble to pay off big and cover the cost of a dozen small future projects. In the modern movie landscape, movies like "The Fault in Our Stars" simply don't get the opportunity to surprise us at the box office.

Fox Searchlight knew they had a potential hit on their hands with the $3.5 million British dramedy The Full Monty, about a group of unemployed steel workers who decide to build their wallets (and their self-esteem) by launching their own striptease show. The movie went on to earn the love of critics and awards voters and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. 

The film, which also earned nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay and won for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score, apparently caught the eye of the studio when they saw the dailies. Audiences seemed to agree, flocking to the film, which brought in $257.9 million worldwide. Most of that money came from international markets, but it still made $45.9 million in the United States.

Some rival distributors said that the movie could have had a quicker release schedule in the U.S., which they believe would have helped the movie's box office chances. (The movie first opened in six theaters and spent four weeks in very limited release before expanding to 387 theaters.) Still, while the movie's box office chances could have been kicked up a notch, it was clearly a huge success for the studio. 

Jordan Peele was already an established comedy actor when he made his feature film directorial debut with Get Out, a horror film which he made for just $4.5 million. The movie wound up being a massive success, earning $255 million worldwide, thanks to near perfect critical reviews and enthusiastic word of mouth.

Get Out used its innovative premise and some smart marketing techniques to blow audiences away with a $33.3 million opening weekend, the 25th biggest February opening weekend of all time. The movie managed to hold on to huge portions of its audience throughout its run, dropping just 15.4 percent in its second week and just 26.5 percent in its third. The movie was buoyed by the conversation surrounding the movie, which pushed people to see it in theaters rather than waiting for it to come out on streaming or DVD.

Buzz for Get Out was so strong that the movie managed to earn four Oscar nominations, despite the fact that it was released almost a full year before nominations were announced and the fact that the Academy has traditionally overlooked horror movies. Get Out wound up being the most profitable film of 2017, featuring a 630 percent return on investment for Blumhouse.

"High School Musical" is a rare example of a blockbuster TV movie debuting on cable and then selling like wildfire on home video. In 2006, the musical comedy set a record for the most-viewed premiere in the history of The Disney Channel (according to USA Today), but that was only a precursor for its massive multi-media commercial success. Six months later, Disney released the movie on DVD and reported 1.2 million sales in its first week on the shelves. Movie data aggregator The Numbers estimates that "High School Musical" grossed over $131 million in DVD sales in the United States alone. It was the very first feature film to go on sale in its entirety on iTunes, as well as the first TV soundtrack ever to hit #1 on the Billboard pop chart, according to Playbill.

"High School Musical" has since become a hugely profitable franchise. "High School Musical 2" grossed $93 million on DVD, and "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" made the leap to theaters, where it brought home $274 million worldwide. The movie itself has been adapted for the stage, leading to "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series," a mockumentary series on Disney+ about high school students putting on the stage musical based on the movie. In 2021, Variety estimated that, within five years of its debut, the "High School Musical" franchise had grossed $4 billion in retail sales.

And what was the production budget for the first "High School Musical," Disney's initial investment in this monster franchise? $4.2 million. We'll call that a passing grade.

Juno earned four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Jason Reitman, and Best Actress in a Leading Role for its star Ellen Page, and a win for Best Original Screenplay after it hit theaters in 2007. The film featured Page as Juno MacGuff, a high schooler who debates her options during a surprise pregnancy.

The indie comedy was made for just a $7.5 million budget, with star Jennifer Garner even taking a pay cut to help the movie keep costs down. Although the film was made on a restricted financing, it ended up being a surprise box office success, bringing in $231.4 million worldwide, including $143.4 million domestic.

Juno's success was due at least in part to its appeal to young teens, specifically women. The movie became a cultural touchstone for many, and continued to build positive buzz throughout its run, adding in more viewers as it expanded to theaters across the country. The movie also continued to get good buzz by being in theaters when awards nominations were announced.

There are a few subjects that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences tend to eat up like candy, chief among them being British royals and World War II. Tom Hooper's "The King's Speech" gave them a dose of both, telling the true story of Britain's King George VI, whose stutter was an obstacle to his duties as the figurehead of a nation creeping towards war. It's a character drama, mostly centered on the relationship between George, his family (including Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Elizabeth), and the Australian actor who serves as his speech therapist.

An independent production working with a budget of about $15 million, "The King's Speech" dominated the British box office upon its release in 2010, and gradually picked up steam in the US during the 2011 awards season. By the end of its long theatrical run, it accumulated a worldwide gross of just under $424 million and the Oscar for Best Picture. It also lent serious credibility to director Tom Hooper, who would later helm the disastrous 2019 film adaptation of the stage musical "Cats." The lesson here: just because a filmmaker can achieve commercial and critical success using $15 million doesn't mean you should give him $95 million to invest in digital fur technology.

The indie comedy Little Miss Sunshine earned four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, which translated to two wins when it hit theaters in 2006, with the movie earning the love of critics and fans alike as it told the story of a young girl (Abigail Breslin) who ropes her family into a cross-country road trip so she can compete in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant.   

Little Miss Sunshine wasn't just critically acclaimed. The movie, which was made for just $8 million, ended up becoming a box office behemoth, earning $100.5 million worldwide, including $59.9 million domestic. The movie managed to achieve those box office heights even though its widest release was in just 1,602 theaters.

Fox Searchlight, the studio that distributed the film, clearly saw the box office potential in Little Miss Sunshine right off the bat, buying the film for $10.5 million after a standing ovation at the first screening caused a bidding war. Having that much buzz around the film right off the bat got film enthusiasts excited, while the quality of the movie led to a long and successful box office run.

Lost in Translation won Sofia Coppola an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and earned three other nominations, including Best Picture, but the movie wasn't just an awards season favorite. The $4 million dark comedy earned $119.7 million at the worldwide box office, including $44.6 million domestic. 

Lost in Translation, which followed the budding relationship between Scarlett Johansson's college student Charlotte and Bill Murray's movie star Bob Harris, first opened on just 23 screens, earning a total of $925,087 for an average of $40,221 per theater, the highest per theater average for a limited release in 2003. 

Although the film never achieved a very wide release, opening in a maximum of 882 theaters, it still held on well at the box office, sitting in theaters for a total of 196 days. The movie's success was thanks to the buzzy performance by Bill Murray, as well as Coppola's established history with The Virgin Suicides and rave reviews from critics.

In the 1970s, the Hollywood movie landscape looked drastically different than it does in the 2020s. While, by modern standards, the films getting produced by major studios at the time were unforgivably homogenous in terms of the racial and gender makeup of the cast and crew, a much wider variety of film genres were thriving at the box office. Trends came and went quickly, sequels were a rarity, and stars were far more bankable than the characters they played. Film adaptations of familiar source material were still safe bets for studios, but the bankable titles were licensed from best-selling novels, not comics, TV shows, or toy lines.

In the case of "Love Story," the 1970 romantic tragedy directed by Arthur Hiller, interest in the film was actually seeded by a novel adaptation of the screenplay being written and released while the film was still in production. The book was a smash hit, and so was the film that followed, grossing $136 million dollars in the worldwide box office (according to The Numbers), the equivalent of $1 billion in today's dollars. Close your eyes and imagine a college romance making Avengers money in 2022 — it feels impossible.

While we can't account for how much was spent to promote "Love Story" — after all, the marketing of the novel should surely be considered part of the film's advertising budget — the American Film Institute reports that about $2.26 million was spent to produce the film, less than 2% of its eventual box office gross.

No cinematic legend has a more humble beginning than "Mad Max," an Australian micro-budget film directed by medical doctor-turned-filmmaker George Miller and starring a bunch of unknown and amateur actors. The production and release of the 1979 post-apocalyptic revenge movie was an uphill battle on every level. It was shot over six weeks on highways that they closed for filming without permits, populated with real-life outlaw bikers using their own equipment and wardrobe, edited on homemade equipment, and banned upon release in neighboring New Zealand. Nevertheless, "Mad Max" performed well commercially in its native Australia and became an international cult classic, eventually accumulating nearly $100 million in global box office receipts.

The profit margin on "Mad Max" is almost too large to believe, with the entire production costing only about $200,000, meaning that the film grossed nearly 500 times its budget. The film's success launched the careers of both director George Miller and star Mel Gibson, and the pair reunited for two increasingly expensive sequels, "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior" in 1981 and "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" in 1985, after which Miller would move on to a wider variety of projects from "The Witches of Eastwick" to "Babe: Pig in the City" to "Happy Feet." When Miller returned to the franchise with "Mad Max: Fury Road" in 2015, it was a critical success and a cultural sensation, winning six Academy Awards and grossing $389 million dollars, but on a budget of $150 million, one and a half times the cumulative gross of the original film. The franchise continues to expand with the hotly anticipated prequel "Furiosa," all on the backs of a small guerrilla production and a budget of under a quarter of a million dollars.

If you're trying to draw audiences to theaters, it helps to offer a grand, immersive spectacle that will play better on the big screen than back at home. Often, this means spending a small fortune on sets, costumes, and visual effects, meaning that you'll have to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars just to break even. Or, you could save a lot of money and cast a bunch of super hunky guys and have them perform extravagant and exotic dances for the camera and an audience of delighted strip club patrons. "Magic Mike" is loosely based on star Channing Tatum's real-life experience as a stripper in Tampa, Florida. It's a sordid, steamy, and surprisingly sobering coming-of-age story brought to life by master director Steven Soderbergh, balancing the over-the-top eroticism of the strippers' night lives with the quiet and complicated details of their personal relationships.

Released in the summer of June 2012 (as perfect counter-programming against Seth MacFarlane's "Ted"), "Magic Mike" never hit the top of the box office but had staying power throughout the summer, accumulating a worldwide gross of $167 million on a budget of just $7 million (via Box Office Mojo). The film's success led to an even bigger sequel, "Magic Mike XXL," a stage show, a reality spin-off series, and 2023's series-capping feature "Magic Mike's Last Dance." In addition to becoming a valuable brand, "Magic Mike" has had a lingering cultural impact, launching Channing Tatum's career to the next level and opening the door to similarly-themed works like the Hulu series "Welcome to Chippendales."

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was just a few days shy of spending a whole year in theaters, and during that time, the $5 million romantic comedy went from a low budget film with few big names to a massive grosser, bringing in $368.7 million worldwide including $241.4 million domestic.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding's box office success was very unique. The movie opened to just $597,362 from 108 theaters, but it continued to build up impressive box office totals throughout its run, eventually hitting the number two spot after 20 weeks in theaters. The movie spent 17 consecutive weeks in the top 10. All of this was in spite of having just a $1 million marketing budget.

The movie's success was unprecedented, as most movies usually see a downward trend after their opening weekends. In fact, the movie showed such strong legs that FiveThirtyEight named it the leggiest major movie of the last 20 years, topping films like Titanic and Bend It Like Beckham.

Star Nia Vardalos even ended up earning an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for the movie, which was also nominated for Best Picture at the Golden Globes. As it turns out, though, magic only strikes once, as the sequel received bad reviews and only made $88.9 million when it hit theaters in 2016, despite upping its budget to $18 million. 

Shinichiro Ueda's "One Cut of the Dead" is a nesting doll of great gimmicks: In the film, a small crew is in the midst of making a low-budget zombie movie when suddenly an actual zombie apocalypse begins. For 37 minutes, we follow the bloody slapstick antics of the actors, director, and company as they attempt to survive the disaster, presented via one uninterrupted take. When that's over, the movie becomes a fictional comedic account of the making of the movie you just watched, revealing that every weird gaffe or detail of the movie-within-a-movie is actually the result of an entire subplot happening behind the scenes. It's an absolutely brilliant little movie whose popularity grew from its small release in Japan to an international cult sensation.

"One Cut of the Dead" has grossed $27.5 million dollars worldwide, which doesn't sound like very much until you consider that it was made on a shoestring budget of 2.5 million Yen, or about $23,000 USD. It was produced by film school Enbu Seminar as basically a student film which the student actors actually paid to perform (per Variety). Its success beyond its local theatrical run took everyone by surprise, eventually leading to it recouping its budget over 1000 times over.

The scrappy success of "One Cut" led French director Michel Hazanavicius (who won an Academy Award for "The Artist") to create a remake, "Final Cut," but despite (or perhaps because of) its much larger budget of $4 million, the new version failed to reproduce the charm of the original.

Low-budget horror flicks are a dime a dozen, and most don't make much of an impact at the box office. However, if you do manage to make a winner, you could be staring down the barrel of a massive box office behemoth, a la Paranormal Activity, the $15,000 found-footage ghost movie that went on to make $193.5 million at the worldwide box office.

Paranormal Activity was shot in just seven days on a handheld video camera by Israeli director Oren Peli, a video game designer with no past film experience. After the movie terrified legendary director Steven Spielberg, studio execs began to take notice, and Paramount ultimately bought the film, with the intention to reshoot it with a higher budget. However, when a test screening blew audiences away, they decided to release Peli's version of the film after crafting an alternate ending. 

Paranormal Activity was partly buoyed by positive reviews, sitting at an 83 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Paramount also used innovative marketing and a smart roll-out strategy for the movie, putting it in limited release and letting it build buzz before setting it into wide release the weekend before Halloween. In its first weekend in wide release (its fifth weekend in theaters), the movie earned the number one spot with $21.1 million. The movie was said at the time to be the most profitable film ever thanks to its miniscule budget.   

The studio upped the budget for the film's inevitable sequels, using $3 million to make the second film, which brought in $177.5 million worldwide, and $5 million to make the third and fourth films, which brought in $207 million worldwide and $142.8 million worldwide, respectively. Although those numbers aren't quite as impressive as what the first film was able to achieve on its shoestring budget, Paranormal Activity has still proven to be an unusually impressive horror franchise.

With the Oscars gradually becoming less relevant to the moviegoing public, the Academy Award for Best Picture is not quite the measuring stick for greatness that it used to be. The 21st century has seen so many underwhelming winners ("Green Book," "Argo," and "Crash," to name a few) that it seems almost miraculous when the Academy crowns a worthy champion. So, imagine the gleeful surprise amongst cinephiles worldwide when Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" — already the winner of 2019's Palme d'Or and an overwhelming critical favorite — became the first non-English-language film ever to take home Best Picture.

A Best Picture win or nomination reliably lends a boost to a film's theatrical attendance in the United States as curious moviegoers attempt to see as many candidates as possible before Oscar night, and "Parasite" was no exception. "Parasite's" domestic box office draw took a sizable jump after the Oscar nominations were announced and another after its Best Picture win, adding up to a healthy $53 million domestic and $262 million worldwide gross.

"Parasite" isn't the highest-grossing Best Picture of its era, but it is one of the most profitable. Made with a budget of about $11 million, "Parasite" made its money back 23 times over, not counting streaming and television rights.

Next to no one saw "Pitch Perfect's" smash commercial success coming, but frankly, we probably should have. "Pitch Perfect," a comedy starring Anna Kendrick about the misadventures of a college a cappella group, was released in 2012 during the height of "Glee" fever, and between that television comedy and the array of rival singing competitions on broadcast television, you couldn't swing a cat without hitting someone screeching out a showy vocal cover of a recognizable pop song. The atmosphere was so saturated with singing that Universal Pictures had actually put "Pitch Perfect" on their back burner for years, out of fear that they might burst the bubble (per The Ringer). It was only after the phenomenal success of ensemble comedy "Bridesmaids" that the studio committed to the project, with a modest $17 million budget.

"Pitch Perfect" opened to a limited release in late September, up against "Hotel Transylvania" and "Looper." Positive reviews and word of mouth assured that the film would climb from #6 to #3 at the box office when it expanded to theaters nationwide the following weekend, actually leap-frogging "Looper" and besting the weekend's big Disney animated release, "Frankenweenie." By the time it completed its theatrical run, "Pitch Perfect" had grossed $115 million worldwide. Its success was followed by two sequels with increasingly larger budgets and a cumulative box office haul of $588 million. The "Pitch Perfect" franchise continues to rock on, with the Peacock streaming series "Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin" kicking off in 2022.

Rocky may not be the top grossing film in the long-running franchise at the box office, but it's $117.2 million worldwide was extra impressive when you realize that the film, starring a then-unknown Sylvester Stallone, had just a $1 million budget. In addition to its impressive box office haul, the film won three Oscars, including Best Picture.

Stallone also earned an Oscar nomination for writing the script for the movie, but despite its astronomical success, he actually had a hard time getting it made. Stallone said that he went through "about 20 different incarnations" of the film before he landed on the finished project, but even then it wasn't easy. Producers Irwin Winkler and Bob Chartoff had to mortgage their homes and use their personal savings to finance the film.

Stallone called making the movie "a big leap of faith," but clearly it was one that paid off. The Rocky franchise holds the top four spots for highest grossing boxing films, most recently taking over the box office with 2015's Creed, which also was an awards season favorite, earning Stallone an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

2004's torture flick Saw didn't just make $103.9 million against a miniscule $1.2 million budget — the movie also managed to launch a lucrative horror franchise, which has continued to pump out low budget box office hits throughout the years. Saw was able to achieve its initial box office heights by using strong word-of-mouth to hold on to viewers throughout its October and November box office run. 

The initial Saw was popular with young viewers, with 60 percent of the opening weekend audience under 25 years old. The movie that managed to capture the minds of young horror fans came from a young filmmaker: James Wan, who was also responsible for the low budget box office hit Conjuring franchise. Wan made the movie, his feature film directing debut, in just 18 days, keeping the budget low and allowing for big profits.

The franchise has continued to build on its strong start, and although it has stumbled at points, the eight films together have still brought in a total of $976.3 million worldwide. The most recent release, 2017's Jigsaw, pulled in $102.9 million worldwide against a $10 million budget, proving just how impressive Saw's initial feat was.

Director Danny Boyle has frequently made a lot out of a little, with his low-budget dark comedy "Trainspotting" becoming a cult classic and his grim and bloody "28 Days Later" winning back its $8 million budget ten times over. His biggest commercial coup, however, came in 2008 with the release of "Slumdog Millionaire," and independently-financed drama about a young man accused of cheating to win on a game show. In addition to winning the Academy Award for Best Picture and launching the international career of star Dev Patel, "Slumdog Millionaire" grossed $378 million worldwide, all off of a budget of only $15 million. At the time of its release, it was the highest-grossing independent film in the history of the British movie industry, though it was eventually dethroned by "The King's Speech."

You might imagine that the film being set in India, home to one of the world's biggest film industries and a film-loving cultures, would be a major contributor to its global box office success. However, you'd be imagining incorrectly. While a big hit in many other international markets, "Slumdog Millionaire" was not as well received in India, where critics and audiences were displeased with the film's portrayal of their country as impoverished and corrupt. Some Indians were justifiably displeased when a movie copping some of their style but made by an English filmmaker was hailed as a worldwide sensation, while British and American audiences continued to overlook the Indian movies from which it drew influence.

M. Night Shyamalan went low-budget for his 2017 horror flick Split, making the James McAvoy-starring thriller for only $9 million. This decision wound up working out well for the twisty director, with the film pulling in $278.5 million worldwide and holding on to the number one spot for its first three weekends at the domestic box office.

Split, an indirect sequel to Shyamalan's 2000 film Unbreakable, featured McAvoy as a man with dissociative identity who kidnaps three teenage girls (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula). The movie received positive reviews from critics, earning a 75 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and was nominated for Best Thriller Film at the Saturn Awards. 

Split became Shyamalan's fifth film to pass $100 million at the domestic box office, proving that the director has the power to bring in large audiences. However, Split's low budget made that figure even more impressive, with the movie able to pull in extra viewers thanks to McAvoy's buzzy performance.

The movie's appeal was shown during its opening weekend, where it defied expectations by seeing a 13 percent bump from Friday to Saturday, which is unusual for a genre film.  It continued to leg out throughout its run in the normally slow months of January and February, allowing it to build on its impressive opening for a huge total haul.