Oops! We couldn’t find any results...
Take a look at this chart.
It shows the median production budget of different film genres and box office revenue as a share of the production budget.
Revenue from successful horror movie ticket sales averages nearly 8x the amount spent to make the film.
That’s nearly double the rate of any other film category, making horror the most profitable genre by far during this period of time.
That’s not the only positive sign.
Horror’s growth rate also tops the charts with the category’s share of overall box office revenue tripling from 2013 to 2023*.
Horror thrives in theaters where audiences crave the shared experience, and has a passionate fan base that fuels cult followings, events, and year-round demand.
How can you take part in this sector’s growth? What if you could partner with someone obsessed with the space who has a track record of horror hits?
Eli Roth, the twisted mind behind Cabin Fever, Hostel, and The Last Exorcism, whose films total $474 million in box office, just announced the launch of his new horror studio — and wants to give fans the opportunity to own a piece of it, exclusively through Republic.
Horror Culture
“What if you could get the fan population actually invested in the movies, literally, and then they're rooting for you every step of the way.”
- Eli Roth, on KTLA, Los Angeles
To get a sense of the passion of horror fans, consider the sheer magnitude of the major events.
Midsummer Scream, the world’s largest horror convention, experienced record attendance in 2024. Over 50,000 people filed into the Long Beach Convention Center for this annual celebration of blood and gore that kicks off the Halloween season.
Many come dressed as their favorite characters. It’s all part of the horror culture where fans are literally obsessed with the films and their storylines.
Internationally, conferences like the UK’s Arrow Video FrightFest and Brazil’s Fantaspoa show the genre’s global reach. FrightFest attracts tens of thousands, while 85,000 people attended an online chapter of Fantaspoa in 2022.
Eli Roth recently appeared at Monster-Mania, one of the largest conventions on the East Coast. When asked why he wants to create his own studio, Roth told fans:
“Why don't we just make them ourselves, release them ourselves, and just build IP, and then we don't, we don't need the studios anymore.”
“I’d rather make a movie for $3 million… Cabin Fever was a million and a half bucks… Hostel was $4.8 million... Green Inferno was $3 million. These are the movies that matter to people, and these are the movies that matter to me.”
Those movies made up to 20x their production budget at the box office.*
Hardcore, uncut, unrated horror films are what fans want. Learn how Roth plans to give fans exactly what they want with his new company, The Horror Section.
*Past performance is not indicative of future results.
The Value of IP
“What if we create the next Freddy or Michael and you own a piece of that?”
- Eli Roth, on Fox 11’s Good Day LA
The most valuable element in horror: intellectual property.
Consider the box office performance of some of the largest horror franchises created in the last 20 years.
The Conjuring universe. 9 films grossed $2.3B against a total production budget of $218M
The Saw franchise. 10 films grossed $1.1B against a total production budget of $108M
The Purge franchise: 5 films grossed $535.3M worldwide against a production budget of $53M
Legendary characters carry the same power. Think of Freddy Krueger ($592M), Michael Myers ($855M), Jason ($755M), and Ghostface ($911M), who’ve now been drawing fans to theaters for decades.
The power of these characters doesn’t stop at the theater. There’s merchandise, toys, and conventions for fans, as well as licensing rights, TV shows, and more.
With The Horror Section, fans get the opportunity to own a piece of the intellectual property–the films, the characters, and all these revenue sources. There’s even a special profit share.
Film Release Strategy
“We’re at the point where we can release a movie, unrated, in 2,700 theatres and it’s going to open bigger than a $150M tentpole studio film.”
- Eli Roth, at Monster-Mania Con
Roth’s quote above references how the indie horror hit Terrifier 3’s opening weekend outperformed the second weekend of a major Hollywood studio release, The Joker Folie a Deux, in late 2024. Here's Art the Clown, the star of Terrifier 3, shaking his head at all the money spent on billboards in Times Square.
Terrifier 3 went on to pull in $90.3 million at the box office on a budget of just $2 million, becoming the most profitable film of 2024.
How did an unrated horror film achieve that kind of success?
Horror films are events. Fans lined up around the block for tickets to see Terrifier 3, many dressed as the main character, Art the Clown.
The marketing and release strategy was spearheaded by Iconic Events, a company that specializes in distributing live events and films to its network of more than 2,500 theaters across North America and beyond. Their approach spreads the word deep inside fan cultures (like horror) to drive attendance, keeping the marketing budget well below what’s typically required for major theater releases.
The Horror Section plans to take full advantage of this strategy by forming a partnership with Iconic Events to release hardcore, unrated horror films directly to fans in theaters, the way they are meant to be watched. This release strategy allows filmmakers like Eli Roth to avoid the creative limitations imposed by traditional studios and gives fans the kind of in-person experience they love.
As Eli Roth noted in a recent interview, “I want to make movies straight for fans, where you can put them out in the theatres, bloody and gory.”
Made for fans, owned by fans
In creating The Horror Section, Eli Roth wants to make films that stand the test of time.
That passion came through in a story he shared in a recent TV appearance on Good Day LA.
“I remember Tarantino when I was making Hostel, I said, 'Is this movie too sick?' and he said, ‘Don’t worry about opening weekend. Think about that weekend 15 years from now if kids are still watching it at a sleepover. That’s the weekend that matters.’”
Fans are loving The Horror Section, with more than $2 million committed from investors in the first 48 hours. Go here to see how you can join the more than 700 investors in Eli’s new project.
