The Joy of Gore interviews Eli Roth, writer/director of the horror film Cabin Fever, Lions Gate’s highest grossing film of 2003:
Nobody wanted to make it so we had no money. We made Cabin Fever for a million and a half dollars. Last Samurai was made for 170 million. Master and Commander was 150 million. It was literally made for one hundredth the cost of the big blockbusters. But once it was made [the distributors] were all fighting for it.When you’re making a movie, it’s an abstract idea in your head. So, you hope first of all that the movie turns out well and then you hope that people like it. It’s an incredible thing to be literally told by eveybody you’ve ever met — these so-called professionals — that your movie won’t work and that no one wants to see it. Everybody. I just knew they were wrong.
I saw how much money low-budget horror movies make and knew that you can make the movie for a million bucks. You don’t need stars — you need good actors. It doesn’t have to have slick production value. It can be well crafted and well made.
Any time you make an independent movie, there’s no guarantee it’ll ever go anywhere other than a shelf. It was a scary thing and it was pretty incredible to risk everything on a project. But I knew it would work. I just knew that there was such a void of low-budget, really violent horror movies that were fun.