James Wan‘s “Insidious” earned almost $100 million worldwide, while Oren Peli‘s Paranormal Activity films combined earned almost $600 million dollars.  Big deal, you might say–and it is–till you realize that “Insidious” cost only $1.5 million to make, while the Paranormal Activity films COMBINED cost just over $8 million.

That’s a lot of return for minimal investment, which couldn’t have been missed over at Universal Pictures, where a movie based upon the board game “Ouija,” was running up costs of at least $100 million.

Now keep in mind that “Ouija” was part of the development deal that includes the Transformers films and “Stretch Armstrong,” which Universal (wisely) let go.

So what did the studio do?  They  cut the budget, resulting in “Ouija” being budgeted at $5 million, as opposed the insane $100 million.

What the aforementioned “Insidious” and Paranormal Activity films (should) have shown is that you don’t need to invest a mint in a genre film to bring in huge profits.