While some horror movies were always destined to be box office hits, a lot of the genre’s biggest financial successes were written off as inevitable flops before their release. Horror is a popular genre among studio executives and filmmakers alike. Since horror movies have historically been cheap to produce, they tend to provide filmmakers with a pretty low-risk investment opportunity. Where a great fantasy or sci-fi movie requires tons of money to spend on elaborate world-building and visual effects, a successful horror movie can sometimes require only a mask, a bucket of fake blood, and a few unknown up-and-coming actors.
However, this doesn’t mean every horror movie is guaranteed to be a hit. Even great horror movies bomb at the box office, meaning that producers still have to weigh up the risks when they choose to invest in a filmmaker’s project. Sometimes, this is easy. When Paramount dropped massive money on marketing Friday the 13th via an instantly iconic set of promotional posters, the studio reaped the rewards. Friday the 13th was poised to cash in on Halloween’s success, so it was no surprise when the low-budget slasher became a blockbuster upon release. However, sometimes executives and producers are left kicking themselves when they reject future horror hits.
10 Whatever Happened To Baby Jane
Before Whatever Happened To Baby Jane was released, the movie was already famous. Unfortunately for the filmmakers, this was because of endless on-set drama. An adaptation of the Robert Aldrich novel of the same name, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, told the tale of two troubled sisters who shared a dilapidated mansion and a dark secret. After all of the tabloid stories about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford reigniting their iconic feud on the set of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, it seemed inevitable that the finished flop would be a mess. Instead, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane was an Oscar-nominated hit that earned over ten times its budget.
9 The Terminator
Nowadays, it seems impossible to imagine a time when studios would bet against the creator of Avatar and its sequels. However, in 1984, James Cameron was an inexperienced director with only Piranha 2: The Spawning to his name. As such, when the sci-fi horror went over budget, The Terminator’s production company Orion Pictures refused to give Cameron any more money. Cameron fronted the money to finish production, so producers were understandably uncertain about the project’s future. With a budget of $6 million, The Terminator earned $78 million at the box office and spawned five sequels.
8 Jaws
The production of Jaws was a mess. What was originally envisioned as a cheap monster movie eventually ended up over budget and past schedule. To make matters worse, the production was plagued by a mechanical shark that looked ludicrous and refused to function. With a young, inexperienced director in Steven Spielberg, Jaws seemed destined to flop before the movie arrived in theaters. Instead, Jaws made blockbuster history, spawned the underrated sequel Jaws 2 and a string of further follow-ups, and kick-started Spielberg’s legendary Hollywood career.
7 The Blair Witch Project
Before The Blair Witch Project made the found footage format famous, the project’s creators struggled to find a distributor for the horror movie. Believe it or not, super horror producer Jason Blum turned down this future mega-hit as he didn’t see the potential in the movie’s innovative fact or fiction approach (via ComicBook). While Blum has since become one of horror cinema’s biggest names, this one must sting a little. Made for a mere $200,000, The Blair Witch Project earned around $250 million.
6 Terrifier 2
2016’s Terrifier was not for horror neophytes. A grimy, brutal, hard-R indie horror hit with tons of gratuitous violence and no major names, Terrifier was a discomfiting watch that haunted even experienced horror fans. As such, Terrifier 2’s cinema release seemed like a terrible idea when the movie’s predecessor went straight to streaming, the sequel still had no known actors, and Terrifier 2 was saddled with a 138-minute runtime. However, a $15 million box office haul proved these doubts wrong, leading to Terrifier 3’s much bigger budget.
5 The Exorcist
The Exorcist’s source novel didn’t sell until author William Peter Blatty’s famous appearance on Dick Cavett’s talk show. When an adaptation finally entered production, the movie cost three times its original budget, and the production process was a costly, dangerous disaster. Furthermore, the potentially offensive material worried many executives about The Exorcist’s potential struggles with censors. Upon release, The Exorcist became a spectacularly successful Oscar-nominated blockbuster that earned over $425 million.
4 Get Out
Jordan Peele’s Get Out is now recognized as a horror masterpiece. However, producer Jason Blum noted there were “99 ways it could have gone wrong” when speaking about Get Out’s production. Speaking to Forbes, Blum even justified the movie’s $4.5 million budget by saying, “If I was running a studio, for $20 million of course I'd say no.” That budgetary restriction didn’t hold back Peele’s horror debut, as Get Out went on to gross over $250 million at the box office.
3 Nightmare On Elm Street
While Disney’s Nightmare On Elm Street never happened, the fact that the studio almost had a hand in the slasher franchise proves how much director Wes Craven struggled to find a home for his vision. Disney wasn't willing to touch Craven’s movie unless he downgraded it to a family-friendly PG, while Paramount and Universal were equally skeptical about Nightmare On Elm Street’s potential. The subsequent Nightmare On Elm Street series was so incredibly successful that its eventual distributor, New Line Cinema, was known as “The House that Freddy Built” for years to come.
2 M3GAN
M3GAN seemed like a joke when its first trailer hit social media. A January horror whose promotional materials went viral for being camp comedic value, M3GAN looked like a surefire failure upon release. However, M3GAN turned out to be a self-aware comedy horror that earned $180 million with a $12 million price tag. The biggest trick that M3GAN had up its sleeve was a PG-13 rating which meant the movie could appeal to the same tweens and teenagers who made its trailer a viral success.
1 Paranormal Activity
Paranormal Activity eventually became the biggest found footage hit since The Blair Witch Project, but this was far from an overnight success story. Paranormal Activity spent several years on the shelf of its distributor after being picked up on the festival circuit. The distributor wasn't sure how to market the lo-fi chiller, eventually opting to promote the movie via social media and see if this worked. Thus, Paranormal Activity was sent out to die as the no-budget movie went up against the franchise powerhouse Saw VI. However, Paranormal Activity’s experimental trial marketing strategy proved much more lucrative than studios anticipated, and the $15,000 horror movie earned over $194 million.
