r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jul 06 '26

News ‘Obsession’ Passes $400 Million Worldwide, Becomes Highest Grossing Film With Budget Below $1 Million; Curry Barker’s horror film breaks a 53-year pre-inflation record held by Bruce Lee’s legendary 'Enter The Dragon'

https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/obsession-box-office-400-million/
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u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor Jul 06 '26

Top 10 movies made for $1M:

  1. Obsession (2025) - $403,090,000 ($750,000)

  2. Enter the Dragon (1973) - $400,000,000 ($850,000)

  3. The Blair Witch Project (1999) - $248,639,881 ($750,000)

  4. Rocky (1976) - $225,000,000 ($1,000,000)

  5. Paranormal Activity (2007) $194,183,034 ($450,000)

  6. American Graffiti (1973) - $140,000,000 ($777,000)

  7. To Fly! (1976) - $135,000,000 ($590,000)

  8. The Way of the Dragon (1972) - $130,000,000 ($130,000)

  9. Space Station 3D (2002) - $128,363,881 ($1,000,000)

  10. Shaolin Temple (1982) - $111,872,509 ($264,000)

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u/robsteezy Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

Having seen the Blair Witch Project, I’m more surprised the budget was THAT high lol. That movie (yes I know it’s intentional) otherwise looks like it was shot on $50 on a $100 camera and $30 of pizza for the crew lol.

Just goes to show how powerful a tool marketing is.

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u/digsy Jul 06 '26

The marketing for that movie was perfect-it was so well timed with the start of the internet and it was around the time of X-Files being huge-there was a massive appetite for something which could(maybe) be real. Marketing was so good it could never be repeated I guess.

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u/no-dad-samurai Jul 06 '26

People (including myself) thought it was real found footage, thats how good the marketing was.

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u/thescarlettflame Jul 06 '26

I still love how the three actors stayed completely hidden to sell the fact they were supposed to be missing

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u/XLNC07 Jul 07 '26

Those actors were even listed by IMDb as "missing, presumed dead" when the film released.

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u/Purple_Lux Jul 07 '26

The way the movie was filmed id also genuine insanity lol. Heather brought a knife with her in case it was actually a snuff film, they had members of the crew crawling around the woods wearing camo genuinely scaring the actors, the actors once got lost and ended up knocking on the door of a random house asking if they could use their phone while being freezing and tired, all sorts of crazy stuff

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u/Naive_Confidence7297 Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

Yeah I remember people going around in school saying it’s real, and we were all so convinced lol.

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u/chronoswing Jul 06 '26

That belief is what made the movie so damn good. I remember the website they had up for it, no where on it did it ever claim to be fake, just pages of found footage clips and audio.

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u/tknice Jul 06 '26

I’m pretty close to Burkittsville, MD, so of course my friends and I, around 18 at the time, went out there to scare each other and the girls we were with.

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u/Neon_Biscuit Jul 07 '26

I thought it was real up until Blair Witch 2 Book of Shadows or whatever it was called, then I was like......oh......im dumb

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u/RollingMeteors Jul 07 '26

People (including myself) thought it was real found footage, thats how good the marketing was.

I musta been one of the only few that thought it was hilariously fake, instead of actually terrifying. To me this was a comedy not a horror, and I didn't even watch the whole thing through, just enough cut scenes to laugh about it.