20 major movies that started out as short films

Like tiny grubs going through a major transformation, some short films eventually spread their wings to become full cinematic features. Whether they started life on YouTube or were discovered by Hollywood directors at film festivals, here are the best brief movies that made the jump...

Based on the short: Bottle Rocket

Wes Anderson turned a 13-minute short film into a crime comedy featuring co-writer Owen Wilson and his brother Luke, starring alongside James Caan and Robert Musgrave. While the final film was a box office failure, Martin Scorsese chose it as one of his top 10 movies of the 1990s.

Based on the short: Fake Machete trailer in Grindhouse

This over-the-top fake trailer for a blood-thirsty action flick was so good it just had to be made into a movie. Danny Trejo's day labourer seeks vengeance when he's set up for murder, using everything from the weapon of the title to a motorbike fitted with a minigun to dispatch his enemies. The movie remained remarkably faithful to the phoney preview, too.

Based on the short: Lights Out

David F Sandberg's brilliant horror short was created for a film competition but scored its real prize – a full movie – when it went viral. The fleshed out story of an entity who vanishes and reappears when lights are turned on and off made an impressive $148.9 million worldwide from a budget of $4.9 million.

Based on the short: Jay & Seth vs. The Apocalypse

This comedy short starring Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel put a neat spin on the Odd Couple trope: the pair were trapped inside their apartment together because outside those walls the apocalypse was happening. The resulting movie was a star-studded comedy that lampooned many of its actors.

Based on the short: The Customer Is Always Right

Disillusioned with Hollywood, Frank Miller didn't want to let anybody make a movie based on his comic books. To convince him, Robert Rodriguez made a short that reproduced a scene from Sin City so faithfully that he couldn't refuse – and it was so good it ended up being the opening of the final film.

Based on the short: Saw

When director James Wan and writer/actor Leigh Whannell failed to get Saw made in Australia, the pair took their script to Los Angeles. To attract producers they shot a low-budget short that kick -started an eight-film franchise that is close to amassing $1 billion from the series' paltry $77 million production costs.

Based on the short: Frankenweenie

There's a delicious irony about a project based on Frankenstein being brought back to life. Disney fired Tim Burton in 1984 claiming his live-action short was unsuitable for young audiences but welcomed him back 28 years later to create a stop-motion remake.

Based on the short: Le Jetée

Chris Marker's sci-fi featurette heavily inspired Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, which borrowed several concepts directly from it. Largely constructed using still images, with one live-action section when Marker managed to hire a camera, it's a powerful short.

Based on the short: The Dirk Diggler Story

Paul Thomas Anderson came up with the idea for The Dirk Diggler Story when he was just 17 years old. Despite shifting from a mockumentary tone to one of pure drama, a number of scenes appear almost verbatim in both films.

Based on the short: Alive in Joburg

Neill Blomkamp's sci-fi mockumentary was shot as a proof of concept for the alien technology and was so good Peter Jackson hired him to shoot the Halo video game movie. When that fell through, Blomkamp took ideas from Alive in Joburg and turned it into District 9, which was nominated for Best Picture at the 2010 Oscars.

Based on the short: Peluca

Did you know that the character Napoleon Dynamite was originally called Seth? That's the name Jon Heder goes by in the short Peluca, which was shot by Jared Hess for a university project in 2002 and launched a pop-culture icon.

Based on the short: Within The Woods

Long-time friends Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell launched a horror franchise and their own careers when they shot a low-budget short to try and entice backers. An early screening at their local cinema alongside The Rocky Horror Picture Show helped drum up interest.

Based on the short: Some Folks Call It A Sling Blade

Writer/director Billy Bob Thornton must have been pretty proud of himself. Not only did the film based on his short Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade win him the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, it also netted him a nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

Based on the short: Cashback

There was no clock watching when it came to the quick turnaround for this sci-fi short about a supermarket worker who can stop time. Creator Sean Ellis expanded the original screenplay into a full film script in just seven days once he had interest and since he had commitments from all of his cast to appear in the film he was able to use some of his existing footage unchanged.

Based on the short: Mama

Guillermo del Toro called the horror short Mama "one of the scariest little scenes he'd ever seen" and championed Andy and Barbara Muschietti's film to turn it into a feature.

Based on the short: Gowanus, Brooklyn

The 2004 winner of the Short Filmmaking Award at Sundance was quickly turned into the Oscar-nominated film Half Nelson, as Ryan Fleck's movie scored a Best Actor Oscar nod for Ryan Gosling.

Based on the short: Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138 4EB

USC student George Lucas wanted to bring the future alive on film, "based on the concept that we live in the future and that you could make a futuristic film using existing stuff". He remade the 1967 short as THX 1138 four years later, on his way to chronicling the events in a galaxy far, far away.

Based on the short: The Hard Case

This 1995 short was seen by Trudie Styler, who not only invested money to help Guy Ritchie create Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but also asked her husband Sting to be in the film.

Based on the short: 9

UCLA student Shane Acker took four and a half years to create his Oscar-nominated animated short 9. It was time well spent –Tim Burton was so impressed with its artistic vision that he went on to produce Acker's feature-length adaptation.

Based on the short: Milton

Mike Judge's Office Space eventually found its audience on home video and became a cult classic – not bad for a concept that started life as a simplistic online animation.