SALT LAKE CITY — The cult comedy Napoleon Dynamite turns 15 years old this month, a milestone for a movie that became an early breakaway hit in today’s era of pop-culture geek celebration.

The movie created the “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt and made Napoleon’s disgusted version of “gosh!” into a 2004 catchphrase.

Made for just $400,000 by a group of recently graduated Brigham Young University film students, it would ultimately gross more than $46 million after its June 2004 release. A word-of-mouth hit before Twitter and Facebook took off, it was part of a handful of independent comedies that took off in the early 2000s.

“Napoleon Dynamite” tells the story of its curly-headed, socially awkward title character who ultimately triumphs over the high school jocks and cheerleaders because of his quirks, rather than in spite of them.

Its success added to a rising profile for the world’s unapologetic nerds at the beginning of a new wave of geek glory. “The Big Bang Theory,” would debut a few years later and become television’s top-rated sitcom, while comic book movies achieved box office dominance.