Other notable examples of horror sleeper-hits to follow in Halloween's wake include Friday the 13th in 1980, The Evil Dead in 1981, A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, Scream in 1996, I Know What You Did Last Summer in 1997, The Blair Witch Project in 1999, Final Destination in 2000, Saw in 2004, Hostel in 2005, Paranormal Activity in 2007, both The Purge and The Conjuring in 2013, and both Happy Death Day and the Academy Award-winning Get Out in 2017. Its success caused other slasher films to try the same approach, although few fared as well since horror films heavily rely on opening weekend box office and quickly fall from theaters. The independent film Halloween, which played over the course of fall 1978 through fall 1979 and relied almost completely on word-of-mouth as marketing, was also a sleeper hit, having a box office take of $70 million on a budget of only $325,000. The 1979 Australian film Mad Max, which sprung from the Ozploitation movement and helped to popularise the post-apocalyptic dystopia genre, held the record for the biggest profit-to-cost ratio for several years until it was broken in 1999 by The Blair Witch Project, also a sleeper hit. A Christmas Story (1983) was initially a modest success with little promotion, but after Ted Turner purchased the MGM back-catalog a few years later and began rerunning the film on his cable networks every December, it became an iconic Christmas classic. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) was considered a flop for the first 6 months of its release until it found popularity in midnight screenings afterwards. It was also one of the successful films during the beginnings of the American New Wave of cinema. Įasy Rider (1969), which was created on a budget of less than $400,000, became a sleeper hit by earning $50 million and garnering attention from younger audiences with its combination of drugs, violence, motorcycles, counter-culture stance, and rock music. In theory, a successful screening leads to word-of-mouth marketing, as it compels viewers to discuss an interesting, low-key film with co-workers when they return to work after their weekend. In the case of Sleepless in Seattle, a romantic comedy, screenings were held at suburban shopping malls where romantic couples in their mid-20s to early 30s spent Saturday afternoons before seeing a new film. Screenings for these films are held in an area conducive to the film's demographic. This alternative form of marketing strategy has been used in sleeper hits such as Sleepless in Seattle (1993), the Oscar winner Forrest Gump (1994), My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), There's Something About Mary (1998), and The Sixth Sense (1999). Some sleeper hits in the film industry are strategically marketed for audiences subtly, such as with sneak previews a couple of weeks prior to release, without making them feel obliged to see a heavily promoted film.
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