OREN PELI SPENT $15,000 OF HIS OWN MONEY TO MAKE "PARANORMAL ACTIVITY" & MADE $7.9 MILLION IN IT'S FIRST WEEKEND! SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO GO FOR IT!

For his first stab at directing a movie, video game programmer Oren Peli used $15,000 of his own money to shoot "Paranormal Activity," with a handful of unknown actors, over seven days in 2006.
The set for the horror movie was his house, a suburban Southern California tract home whose noisy setting provided the inspiration for the tale of a demonic haunting.

There was no omen the movie would become a grass-roots Internet marketing sensation three years later, earning $7.9 million in its first weekend of limited release - in just 160 theaters. The film is poised for a nationwide release Friday.

"After I moved in to my house, I started hearing strange creaks and other noises, and sometimes finding things moved from where I could have sworn I put them," the director told the Daily News by e-mail. "The genesis of the idea was inspired by personal experience."

Hollywood studios at the time, however, were less inspired.

After every single one turned down Peli's movie two years ago, a DVD screener landed on the desk of Jason Blum, a producer whose credits include "The Reader." Blum watched the movie with two friends at his home one night.

"Everybody left the house and I went to bed, and I was a 38-year-old guy at the time and I’m actually a little bit scared in my bed,” said Blum. "I heard a little knock upstairs, and it actually scared me.

"First of all, I was thinking I was pathetic, and then I thought this is some movie."

Fast-forward two years and the film, distributed by Paramount, has already garnered comparisons to 1999's "Blair Witch Project," a movie with a similar hand-held camera feel that cost $60,000 to make, but earned a whopping $140 million at the box office. Paramount launched a "Demand It!" campaign, soliciting horror fans to vote to have the movie released in their hometowns. The studio promised if the number of votes hit the million mark, it would release the movie across the country.

It did.

Audiences stopped screaming at screenings long enough to give the film incredible word of mouth. Steven Spielberg was reportedly so freaked out by the creepiness of the film, he couldn't watch the whole movie in one sitting.

"It took 10 years to find another 'Blair Witch Project' - this really is lightning in a bottle," said Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com. "These are unique films that are a product of their time and place and circumstances and that’s what makes them so unique and fun. You try to replicate this kind of thing at your peril."

From the set of his next movie, "Area 51," Peli said "the success the movie has attained already is beyond my wildest dreams."

For Blum, it also was a chance to make up for a decade-old regret, dating to when he worked as the head of acquisitions for Miramax.

"I passed on 'The Blair Witch Project,' just like a lot of other people did," said Blum. "When that happened, I thought to myself, 'I'm never going to allow this to happen again.'"