The unstoppable force that is Paranormal Activity has become (percentage-wise), the most profitable movie of all-time, domestically.
As of this morning, the low budget horror film has brought in $62.5 million USD domestically, even beating out the latest in the Saw franchise this weekend by a large margin.
The film cost about $13,500 USD to make, and its domestic distribution rights were bought by Paramount for a mere $300,000. Currently the movie is sitting on 462,000 percent profit, an astounding figure which just surpasses that of the Blair Witch Project which cost $35,000 to make and brought in $140.5 million domestically, a 400,000 percent profit margin.
Oversees figures are not added in the calculations as overseas rights were given to different distributors in both cases.
Making the numbers even more impressive is the fact that movie has not even been given a full run yet. It will be given another expansion next weekend for Halloween.
“I couldn’t be happier with our team’s great work. Adam Goodman believed in this movie and championed it from the first day he saw it. He recognized it was a great story with commercial potential, and made sure it had a home in our schedule and the release it deserved,” added Paramount chairman Brad Grey.
Result for: horror film
Starz has announced the VOD release of the Rob Zombie film The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, testing a new method in which the company debuts the films via on-demand weeks before it premiers in theaters or on DVD.
The film will cost $6.99 USD however, if customers choose to watch it earlier.
The Starz Media senior VP of digital media, business development and strategy Marc DeBevoise did note however that the new VOD debut was simply a test, and the company was testing the waters for possible future releases.
“It’s the right timeframe,” DeBevoise said, via VB. “It’s a totally different piece of content than you see anywhere else. We felt this was the one to really experiment it on.”
Horror films have, in the past, performed well on VOD.
Result for: horror film
Blue Underground, a giant distributor of cult and horror movies on DVD has announced that they will begin releasing their titles on Blu-ray later this year.
There was no word on which titles would retail first or even what quarter the movies would be released in but Blue Underground has already put word on their website that they plan to support the format with a large number of Blu-ray releases.
First started in the early 90s, Blue Underground has a large catalog of cult and horror classics, including some of the more popular titles from legends of film making like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Larry Cohen, and George A. Romero.
