Aardman Animation started off with Morph, a filler bit for Tony Hart’s art show. Several Oscars and successful feature films and TV shows later…
still no *Morph *movie, though.
Domino’s Pizza started out as a small, local business, then went public as a penny stock. Wish I had invested $10,000 in it those many years ago.
True, but no network television show is “very, very small.”
Things that started out very, very small and became HUGE
The national debt
For that matter, the character of Jack Shepard was originally supposed to die in the first episode.
Cabbage Patch dolls. Xavier Roberts grew up in the hills of north Georgia and noticed how much people went wild for traditional “hillbilly crafts” and experimented with modernizing an old fashioned “quilt doll” his grandmother used to make for the girls in the family. He and a partner handmade them (well, they used a sewing machine, but no mass production and no two identical) and sold them at craft shows, then when they began becoming regionally popular they hired others near Cleveland, Georgia to make them and sold them at a small shop there. Then they began sending them to privately owned shops on consignment.
When the fad still didn’t die out they opened Babyland Hospitalwhich both helped streamline production and was great for marketing. Then Coleco bought the rights to produce them and of course it was huge; if you can remember Christmas 1982s you’ll remember the stories of people doing everything from smashing car windows to trading sexual favors and family heirlooms to get one of those things.
Coleco’s bankrupt now and Hasbro has taken over and they’re nowhere near as big as their early '80s heyday, but they’re still big business and Cleveland, Georgia still gets lots of visitors to the Bethlehem of the little buggers.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding. In its opening weekend it made $597,362, playing in 108 theaters, and was ranked #20.
By the start of its 10th week it had only made a total of $14,541,150, playing in 444 theaters, and was ranked 14th (it had made it to 10 one weekend in which everybody involved probably jumped for joy, before it slid back out of the Top 10). Since the budget was $5 million, that’s not too bad a theatrical run. Most low-budget light romantic comedies, hell, most movies, would have been out of the theater and on their way to a decently healthy life on DVD.
But something very strange happened. Good word-of-mouth kept spreading from the Greek community to movie buffs to the general public, and the movie continued to play in the theaters, and play, and play, and play.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding ended up being in release for 51.4 weeks, playing in 2,016 theaters at its height. Its final domestic total was $241,438,208, and the final worldwide total was $368,744,044.
All that, and it never was #1 at the box office. It made it to #2 for 3 weeks in a row.
Say what you will about the movie, but it was a rare phenomenon that still makes people, including me, and I loved the movie, shake their heads in awe and wonder.
By contrast with another movie that occurred to me, The Blair Witch Project cost $60,000 to make, and made a worldwide total of $248,639,099, but it only played in the theaters in the US for 16 weeks.
I didn’t know Pixar sold hardware to be used in areas other than film making. That is really neat. They got their start as the computer graphics division of LucasFilm and then Lucas sold it off to Steve Jobs. That is when it became Pixar. I knew they sold hardware to Disney that they used to help automate their 2D animation process, neat to find out it had non show business applications, as well.
Ultima: Richard Garriot sold the spiritual successor of Ultima (Aklabeth) in ziploc bags out of his garage.
Hulk Hogan. Went from being a member of a local band to becoming a cultural icon. Even non-wrestling fans know who he is.
Michael Dell started selling computers out of his dorm room.
Quentin Tarantino dropped out of high school (as a 17 year old freshman) and worked in a video store.
Of course, Abe Lincoln grew up in a pile of dirt and did his school work on tree bark.
Cirque du Soleil
Watergate
And was born in a tiny log cabin that he built himself.
Nah those are lies, he invented Log Cabin syrup. With a handful of matches. And boot black.
Spiritual predecessor.
Cheers was created by James Burrows (Mary Tyler Moore) and the Charles Brothers (writers and producers of the Bob Newhart Show and Taxi). It premiered on Thursday night on NBC, between Fame and Taxi.
For my contribution, I’ll say How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, which went from being a stapled comic book passed among friends, to a 144-page picture book with advice, to a hit movie.
The 2009 film Julie & Julia began as a blog by Julie Powell, about her attempt at cooking all 524 recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I’d say going from a blog to a major motion picture release is a pretty big jump.
The internet
Kudzu in the South.
The universe.