The most profitable movies of the last five years? All horror films! At least that's according to the folks over at MoviePilot, who ranked the top 10 based on the films' Return on Investment (ROI) — i.e. the ratio of a movie's production budget vs. money earned at the worldwide box office. Admittedly, the word “profitable” is a little misleading; ROI is just one (often problematic) way of measuring profitability. Superhero films and other blockbusters rake in more overall, but their ROI's are inevitably lower thanks to much higher production budgets.
So what's number one? You'll never guess! Seriously. You will never, ever guess.
Here's the Top 10 list:
10. The Last Exorcism ($70M gross vs. $1.8M production budget)
9. Annabelle ($250M vs. $6.5M)
8. Chernobyl Diaries ($38M vs. $1M)
7. Insidious 2 ($162M vs. $5M)
6. The Purge ($91M vs. $3M)
5. Paranormal Activity 3 ($202M vs. $5M)
4. Unfriended ($48M vs. $1M)
3. Paranormal Activity 2 ($177M vs. $3M)
2. Insidious ($100M vs. $1.5M)
1. The Devil Inside ($101M box vs. $1M)
In case you need a refresher on “The Devil Inside,” it's a found footage exorcism movie released in 2012 that currently boasts a scintillating 4.1/10 IMDB user score. In other news, everything is utterly meaningless.
[via Daily Macabre]