Hollywood, eat your heart out

A 10,000 percent return on your investment? That's the improbable payday for "Once," the little independent film about a street musician from Ireland and the girl he falls in love with. (Don’t laugh – at least there aren’t any creeps carrying around air gun canisters.) The picture was made for $150,000 - that wouldn't even cover the M&Ms concession for a major production - and its box office gross is running $16.4 million. Box office, of course, is only for openers. The soundtrack was downloaded 10,500 times on iTunes the day after one of the songs received an Oscar. And let's not forget the DVD, which came out in December and now places No. 12 on Amazon's move and TV list. From Portfolio.com:

The movie was shot in 17 days in 2006, largely on the streets of Dublin. Director John Carney had initially asked Hansard, frontman for Irish rock band The Frames (Carney was bassist in the early ’90s), to write songs for the musical. When Irish actor Cillian Murphy, whose credits include Batman Begins and The Wind That Shakes the Barley, didn’t pan out for the lead, Hansard was asked to step in. Irglova, Hansard’s partner in the musical combo The Swell Season, was already on board. After the film opened in the U.S., it grew slowly and steadily. Fox Searchlight had the best marketing that money can’t buy: word-of-mouth buzz and critical acclaim. While summer’s blockbusters came and went, Once stuck around theaters for an amazing 219 days—most of 2007—whereas Spider-Man and Pirates played for 112 and 133 days, respectively.