So Good, It's Scary ; `Paranormal Activity' Latest in String of Low-Budget Wonders

What's wrong with this picture? On the cusp of James Cameron's "Avatar" (Dec. 18), a sci-fi extravanganza with a budget hovering around $250 million, the box-office champion of the past weekend was a 2007 frightfest that cost $15,000 to make.

Perhaps this is why some think Paramount has been ambivalent and indecisive about how to market the surprise success of "Paranormal Activity," its no-budget wonder, which has earned over $62 million at the box office thus far.

How do studio executives, directors, actors, agents, managers and promotion departments justify the tremendous sums they receive when a $15,000 DigVid phenomenon with a no-name cast is wiping the floor with the costly competition. This includes the $100 million, fast- fading Maurice Sendak adaptation "Where the Wild Things Are," the $11 million "Saw VI," the latest in the grotesquely violent and sadistic series, the $50 million "Law Abiding Citizen," with Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler in the leads, and the $65 million "Astro Boy."

Shoestring films earning huge box-office returns are nothing new. John Carpenter's landmark, remade and oft-sequelized "Halloween" (1978) set the modern-day standard for such super-performing, bargain efforts. With a budget of approximately $300,000, the Carpenter horror classic that introduced the world to unstoppable Michael Myers went on to earn a reported $60 million worldwide.

More recently, "The Blair Witch Project," the brilliant 1999 Maryland woods-set film to which "Paranormal Activity," another faux- doc, first-person-cam effort, is most often compared, cost a mere $22,000 and fetched $248 million worldwide.

Kevin Smith's 1994 indie entry "Clerks," a $27,000 production, made $3 million, still a huge profit in proportion to cost.

David Lynch's first feature film, the legendary, unsettling "Eraserhead" (1977), was made over six years for a cost of $10,000 and went on to a box-office take of $7 million.

Compare these numbers to the heavily promoted Paramount summer bomb "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra." The film was made for $175 million and has not earned back its cost after four months in theaters. Say it aint' so, "Joe."

Originally published by By JAMES VERNIERE.

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