Horror flick's $23m

A HORROR film made on a shoestring budget by two Melbourne students has blitzed Hollywood, taking $23 million on its opening weekend.

James Wan and Leigh Whannell's Saw knocked out major studio movies and debuted as the third most watched movie in the United States.

Wan and Whannell scraped together $7000 to make a short version of Saw. They offered a seven-minute viewing of the film across the US and eventually struck gold with a US film company called Evolution.

The company offered up to $1.4 million to turn Saw into a feature film, and the pair accepted on the proviso Wan direct and Whannell star in it.

Evolution agreed and after making an estimated $20 million profit in just one weekend, the two RMIT students are expected to be flooded with offers for work.