Air is a movie about the development of the Air Jordans that focuses not on Michael Jordan himself, but on the marketing team that came up with the sneakers and signed him to the endorsement deal. Even with the talent behind it (Ben Affleck directing and starring, with Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Marlon Wayans, Chris Tucker, and Viola Davis co-starring), most critics and film journalists took one look at the very idea behind the film and mocked its very existence as a symbol of everything wrong with modern capitalism, especially given that it was made by Amazon Studios, the TV/film arm of a corporate behemoth that has been described as a real-life MegaCorp. Indeed, it was originally supposed to premiere on Prime Video... until test screenings came back so good that Amazon gave it a theatrical release and spent $40-50 million on marketing, including a Super Bowl ad. That bet paid off, as not only did it earn rave reviews as a return to form for Affleck, it made back its marketing budget despite opening against the box-office steamroller that was The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Airplane! was the first shot at a mainstream movie by the people who made The Kentucky Fried Movie. With its obsession with puns and its throwing of conventional plotline out the window, many believed it had box-office disaster written all over it. It became one of the highest-grossing films of 1980.
Animal House was the ambitious foray of the National Lampoon magazine into silver-screen entertainment. Universal execs politely allowed the filmmakers to go wild in their own special way, quietly hoping Animal House wouldn't damage the company's checkbooks. Donald Sutherland famously chose $25,000 in payment over a percentage of the box-office gross, expecting the film wouldn't sell. However, Animal House's charmingly dark and hard-hitting observations on college life, as well as its undeniably quirky brand of vulgar humor, was so refreshing to moviegoers in the late 70s that the film recouped its $2 million budget 50 times over. Donald Sutherland, as you might imagine, was not pleased, and estimated that he missed out on $14 million.
Back to the Future was rejected by every major studio when first pitched in 1980, as the Lorraine/Marty subplot wasn't risqué enough to match other teen comedies at the time (or, in the case of Disney, was too risqué) and Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale were just coming off the negative reception of 1941. This caused some embarrassment for a number of Hollywood execs when, five years later, Zemeckis and Gale made Future under Amblin (with distribution by Universal) and it became the highest-grossing picture of 1985. Plus, an exec at Universal hated the name Back to the Future because he felt that any movie with the word "future" in the title was box office poison. It took the intervention of Steven Spielberg for Zemeckis and Gale to keep the original title.
No one expected Bad Boys for Life to be anything but a late and unwanted sequel to two dumb action movies directed by the polarizing Michael Bay (who wasn't involved in this film) that received negative reviews. Similarly, both lead actors had seen their star power fade over the course of two decades. It was initially set for a 2017 release date, before being cancelled and moved to 2020, in the dump month of January. Bad Boys therefore came as a surprise when it earned $73m in its opening weekend, outgrossed the first two movies, and ended up earning over $424m worldwide, and received glowing reviews deeming a more mature and well-done film than its predecessors. The success was cut short by the COVID-19 Pandemic, but it led to Sony greenlighting a sequel.
The Bourne Identity went way beyond schedule and had director Doug Liman constantly clashing with Universal's executives, who demanded a more high-octane action movie in the vein of Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer. The film also reportedly posted the worst test screening responses in studio history, which was enough for the studio to virtually give up on the movie, ultimately setting its release head-to-head with Scooby-Doo in hopes that it would be quietly buried in the face of what was expected to be a box office juggernaut. However, the film got advance positive word from critics, which fueled an overperforming box office and solid final tally in the heat of a crowded summer and becoming a Genre Turning Point as Die Another Day wore out audiences on the over-the-top gadget-and-CG-filled wink-wink type of spy movie later that year. Universal, with renewed hope, gave next director Paul Greengrass a lot more freedom to work, resulting in a Cash-Cow Franchise of their own.
Clerks, Kevin Smith's shoestring-budget debut, simply popped out of nowhere, had a disastrous first screening with only twelve people, ten of whom were from the cast... but one of the two audience members was a journalist who helped bring it to Sundance and later Miramax, helping Clerks make a heaping wad of cash.
Crazy Rich Asians: There hasn't been a Hollywood movie with an all-Asian cast in a modern setting since The Joy Luck Club back in 1993 and there were producers who wanted to change the female lead into a white woman, believing that casual audiences would not connect with an Asian lead, which author Kevin Kwan had none of that. He ended up selling the rights for $1 to ensure that the movie wouldn't be white-washed. Likewise, the film is directed by someone whose filmography has movies of questionable quality (his only Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes was a Justin Bieber concert movie!). The producers even refused the safer bet of going with Netflix, who even offered to finance a whole trilogy, to remain with Warner Bros. and get the movie in theaters. Crazy Rich Asians crushed those doubts after breaking the box office with $238.5 million globally and earning crazy positive reviews. The sequels based on literary follow-ups China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems are already in the works.
Wonder Woman had been in Development Hell for years and the failures of Catwoman (2004) and Elektra had many executive producers convinced that superheroine movies wouldn't sell well. Moreover, the mixed-to-negative reception of the first three DCEU movies (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad) had many expecting that Wonder Woman would follow the same path. Fortunately, the film earned positive critical and audience reception, with plenty acclaiming it as one of the greatest superhero films ever made, and it became the highest-grossing comic book superhero film with both a female lead and female solo director, earning $200+ million worldwide in just its opening weekend and going on to finish its run with $821 million worldwide. By the end of its theatrical run, it became one of the highest grossing superhero origin movies ever, beating movies now considered genre classics such as Superman (1978), Batman (1989), Spider-Man (2002), Batman Begins (2005), and all the prior MCU origin films.
Aquaman seemed doomed from the start since it centered on the most infamous Memetic Loser in comics (mostly for people not familiar with the comics) and was coming off the disappointment of Justice League (described as "the most successfulBox Office Bomb ever"). It became a box office juggernaut that quickly outgrossed Justice League globally in just three weeks and managed to crack the $1 billion worldwide gross, a feat that Batman v Superman and Justice League failed to achieve despite starring more popular heroes. As of this writing, it has become the highest grossing film in the entire franchise and the highest-grossing DC Comics film of all time (when not adjusted for inflation). Even its critical and audience reception is warm enough to invoke this.
Zack Snyder's Justice League initially didn't seem like it would have amounted to much. Aside from being the Re-Cut version of Justice League, which largely earned mixed-to-negative reviews, the movie's infamous behind-the-scenes troubles (including director Zack Snyder having to step away from production to grieve the death of his daughter, reports of heavy Executive Meddling, and the Hostility on the Set going on under replacement director Joss Whedon) made some skeptical anything good could be salvaged and the fan campaign that demanded its release (#ReleaseTheSnyderCut) was a huge target of mockery among online circles. On top of all that, it was going to be released on the HBO Max streaming service, which was hardly a behemoth compared to competing services like Netflix, Disney+, or Prime Video. Then, when it came out, reviews from critics and audiences alike were positive on the whole and called the Snyder version a major improvement over the theatrical cut, with the movie gaining high viewership numbers that beat out the debut of dueling workThe Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Its release has also led to a more positive re-evaluation of Snyder's previous DCEU entries (particularly Dawn of Justice) and a renewed interest from fans to see the "Snyder-verse" restored.
When Dirty Dancing was screened for Aaron Russo, a producer at Vestron Pictures, his reaction to the film was "Burn the negative and collect the insurance." Dirty Dancing would become one of the highest-grossing films of the year. Part of the skepticism stemmed from Vestron's business model — having been a video company who'd only just expanded into theatrical release, they were focused on films aimed at teenagers, aka the primary video rental audience. Dirty Dancing had been a pickup from MGM and despite the film being intended for teens, it didn't test well with them at all; Vestron's plan was to only show it theatrically for a single weekend and then ship it straight to video. What nobody had foreseen was that older audiences, and most especially women, loved the film.
Before Betty Box bought the film rights to Doctor in the House (1954), no one wanted them as no film about doctors had been successful in the past. However, this film was estimated to have recouped its budget in the first six weeks of being released and spawned six sequels.
When Dora and the Lost City of Gold was announced, many people rolled their eyes because the preschool show it was based on had become a target for mockery. Not helping was the fact that the show ended in 2014, meaning that the potential audience had grown up with no one to take their place. Furthermore, the last attempt at a live action adaptation of a Nicktoon was a failure at every level. Henceforth, it was a surprise when the movie ended up getting 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, with praise going towards the Indiana Jones style adventuring and self-aware humor. It made nearly $120m worldwide on a $49m budget. Its success also convinced Nickelodeon films to green-light a movie based onPAW Patrol for a 2021 theatrical release.
According to Spike Lee, if he can make hit movies, anyone can make hit movies. Do the Right Thing came out of nowhere in 1989, exceeding every low expectation set upon it and holding its own against a crapload of high-profile summer blockbusters.
Dumb and Dumber was constantly rejected by studios because of the movie's title and Executive Meddling on which actors to choose. The actors who were on list turned down the movie but Jim Carrey came to the rescue. The movie went onto be both critically and commercially successful.
Dune (2021): Many feared that various factors would potentially leave Denis Villeneuve's planned two-part adaptation of the original story doomed to be only half-finished, given the fact that the story of Dune is a slow-paced, complicated narrative, the Acclaimed Flop status of his previous sci-fi blockbuster Blade Runner 2049, and the day-and-date streaming status provided by HBO Max (which opened the movie up to piracy due to HD copies of the film being easier to distribute) due to the issues with the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic (which was still depressing box office turnout around the world). Yet the movie consistently overperformed to expectations around the world, thanks in part due to a staggered international release strategy that helped build up good word-of-mouth ahead of its arrival in several key markets and managed to defy expectations to become Warner Bros.'s most successful day-and-date movie since the likes of Godzilla vs. Kong. It then got a whopping ten Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, which rarely happens for sci-fi films, and was the biggest winner of the night with six categories. As such, Legendary Pictures quickly greenlit the sequel, Dune: Part Two, mere days after it opened in the United States.
Much of the early discussion of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was that of worry, with trailers and marketing that didn't inspire a lot of confidence, multiple delays, and a poor track record of adaptations leading to many critics expecting a cringeworthy dud. The intense pre-release publicity was also nearly derailed when a mere two months before the film's final release date, a draft of a universally-disliked proposed update to the Open Game License was leaked to the public, provoking intense protest that included threats of boycotting the film before Wizards of the Coast went on massive damage control.Explanation The proposed change would have abolished OGL 1.0a that was made during the 3rd edition era (used by many game developers unconnected with D&D to create and publish third-party content and derivative rulebooks), replacing it with a new license that requires third-party publishers that made a ton of money to pay a fee to Wizards. Following the immense backlash, Wizards scrapped the proposal, instead committing to keep the 3rd edition-era license active and putting the entirety of the 5th Edition SRD into Creative Commons Then the film came out, and it was well received by audiences and critics alike, many praising it as a charmingly faithful adaptation of not merely Dungeons & Dragons as a game but also of the experience of playing a loose yet entertaining fantasy romp with close friends.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was going to be just a forgettable kids' movie about a lost alien, until preview audiences got a grip on its true magnificence and spread the word. It soon out-grossed Star Wars and became the top worldwide moneymaker until Jurassic Park. M&M-Mars certainly thought it would be forgettable. Hershey, on the other hand, gave it a chance. Thus, the film put Reese's Pieces on the candy map.
The Exorcist was based off a book that only started selling well once writer William Peter Blatty had a chance appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, and many studios passed on the project even if Blatty had success writing for Blake Edwards. Warner Bros. took a chance on it, and the result only made less money than The Sting that year (and is one of the ten highest-grossing movies adjusted for inflation!), while earning widespread praise, including 10 Academy Award nominations, and resulted in an overall bump to the horror genre, exorcism fiction is particular.
A biographical account of a wrestler who's not only still alive but may not be as mainstream as other wrestlers worthy of movies about them, directed by a guy primarily known for comedies and having The Rock as a producer despite being more of an action movie star? Yeah, Fighting with My Family had an uphill climb from the start despite its impressive cast and being endorsed by WWE themselves. Yet come release week, it manages to not only win acclaim through its humor and heart but also easily makes back its budget, managing to wrestle the UK #1 spot from The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part and do surprisingly well in the rest of the world.
Forrest Gump had its rights acquired shortly after the book came out, but spent years in Development Hell, with original studio Warner Bros. losing interest after Rain Man and Columbia also passing on before Paramount took a chance. The studio forced some budget cuts that made Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis exchange their salaries for box office percentages to still make the movie. Considering it was the second highest-grossing movie of the year with over $700 million worldwide, it's estimated Hanks earned at least $60 million! Dave Chappelle, who rejected the role of Bubba feeling the movie would tank, regretted it so much Hanks brought him to You've Got Mail to compensate.
From Dusk Till Dawn was deemed unsellable, with it being hard to be picked up by studios but became a box office hit upon release. It later had two direct-to-video sequel and TV spinoff.
Get Out faced an uphill battle to get greenlit, as many studios didn't understand the underlying message, with one supposedly calling the movie's premise "stupid" and "a failure". Since its' debut, the movie has garnered wide praise, accolades, and put Jordan Peele on the map as a talented director.
Paramount had no expectations in The Godfather, despite being based on a best-seller. Francis Ford Coppola was hired only for his Italian origins, the studio gave him limited funds and complained about every decision of his. It became the highest-grossing movie ever upon release and is frequently in "best of all time" lists.
Godzilla (2014) had a lot to live up to as it was the second American reboot to the series, which left many longtime fans feeling skeptical about whether or not they would be able to pull it off after the last attempt (even in spite of Toho’s approval before release). Not helping matters was that the film's director, Gareth Edwards, had only done one smaller scale film before this, and on top of that there was the amount of articles written by various entertainment outlets that predicted it would be a Box Office Bomb on the grounds that it was a Godzilla movie, a series that has been mostly ridiculed by many western critics as poorly made, nonsensical kids flicks. It ultimately grossed $524 million at the box office, went on to launch the MonsterVerse and won over both film critics who praised it for its visual effects and human drama, and series fans who thought it did the character justice.
The marketing for Good Boys made it look like a movie with a one joke premise (kids swearing), and it was released at a time when R-rated comedies were losing popularity (Long Shot - Seth Rogen's prior comedy before this one - had bombed). It therefore came as a surprise when it got positive reviews and overperformed in its opening weekend, being the first live action and completely original movie of 2019 to top the box office in its opening weekend. Most of the positive reviews praised the movie for being a genuinely mature coming of age story.
Grease was not expected by Paramount to be a blockbuster, despite being based on a successful stage musical. The studio expected Pretty Baby, a period drama about child prostitution set in Louisiana in 1917, to be the studio's hoped-for blockbuster that year. Pretty Baby did make its budget back, but it was dwarfed at the box office by Grease.
Orion Pictures had little faith in Hoosiers, a film that ended up almost as successful as Platoon, the other big Orion release of 1986.
The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) became another hit like its predecessor despite the skeptical nature of audiences and critics for its violent content as well as the threat of banning of the movie because of said content. It would later get a third movie.
United Artists did not have much faith in Dr. No, giving only $1 million to the producers and releasing it in the Midwest before the big American markets. It went on to launch the still-thriving James Bond film franchise.
When Daniel Craig was announced in the titular role in 2005, it was met with criticism for not fitting Ian Fleming's profile of him as tall, dark and suave (the British newspaper Daily Mirror ran the headline "The name's Bland - James Bland"). When his first Bond film came out, Craig's performance received a lot of praise, with it being ironically compared to Fleming's Bond in the original novel.
Jaws was initially picked up as a script treatment by Universal Pictures, but ran into problems almost immediately. A rookie director who only had one other feature film — that bombed in theatres — to his name was chosen to direct the film. An actor who believed he was now box-office poison because of his prior work signed up as one of the main characters. Filming ran over-budget and overtime, with executives denying funding for key reshoots (which then had to be paid out of pocket). There were accusations that the practical effects were cheap and laughable, forcing the filmmaker to improvise by keeping it off-screen for most of the run-time. Yet, contrary to Steven Spielberg and Richard Dreyfuss' beliefs, Jaws became the first film to see wide-release distribution, became one of the highest-grossing films of all time and ushered in a new wave in American filmmaking.
When John Wick was first pitched, film executives had no high expectations. A Fox executive walked out of a test screening of the first movie, hating the movie. And when it was picked up by Lionsgate, the people in charge also had little belief in the movie. Since the first movie, John Wick has achieved worldwide acclaim, box office hits, and a number of projects on the way.
Even Warner Bros. didn't expect Joker to be a success, to the point that they gave it a budget of less than $100 million (possibly in an attempt to dissuade director Todd Phillips from making it). It went on to get rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto Film Festival, even winning the prestigious Golden Lion at the former. Despite being the subject of controversy over its depiction of violence and mental illness, it broke several box-office records, made almost four times its budget in its opening weekend alone, and eventually beat Deadpool to become not only the highest grossing R-rated film of all time, but the first R-rated movie to make a billion dollars worldwide. It further cemented its success with 11 Oscar nominations, the most of any comic book film in history (winning both Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix's Joker and Best Original Score), making it a potential game-changer for the genre.
Almost nobody was counting on Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle to be even remotely successful, with a good number of people even predicting it would become a box-office bomb and ruin the credibility of many of its cast members. Reasons for this mentality included Sony's last attempt at rebooting a classic comedybeing one of the most divisive movies of the decade, the concept of having the main characters be the in-game avatars of a group of high-schoolers in a video game baffling many and overall just the fact that Robin Williams is such a beloved figure that many thought remaking the movie would be an insult to his memory. Upon release, however, people wound up praising the cast, the comedy and how it acted as both a love letter to old-school video games and a surprisingly well-done parody of them, while also being respectful of the original film without relying too much on the nostalgia of the original. Even more surprisingly, despite people thinking it would bomb at the box-office considering it would be released around the same time as The Last Jedi, it wound up doing the opposite, even taking the #1 spot from The Last Jedi after three weeks of release and grossing over $900 million worldwide, making it the 5th highest grossing film of 2017. For a film many counted on crashing and burning at the box-office, to say this is quite the turnaround would be an understatement. It even led to another sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level.
Critics were very hostile to King Kong. "A 50-foot gorilla attacking New York City? And on top of that, falling in love with a human woman instead of eating her? Nobody's ever gonna pay to see that!" Take a guess at how wrong they were. It's one of the earliest examples of Critical Dissonance in cinema.
Ironically, this helped lead to nearly the exact opposite situation for the film's 2005 remake. With director Peter Jackson coming off the massively successful The Lord of the Rings trilogy, whose last installment swept the Academy Awards, the film was seen by box office pundits as a contender for Titanic-style success, as an epic, sweeping update of a truly iconic piece of cinema with a highly advantageous Christmastime release date. While the film did well and was positively received, it didn't meet the sky-high expectations of the pundits, plus wound up being out-grossed by The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which led some to tag it as a disappointment despite turning in a healthy profit.
Mad Max: Fury Road was an R-rated summer blockbuster that was a revival of a franchise that hadn't seen a movie in three decades and was regarded as an aged product restricted to The '80s. It had also spent ages in Development Hell and had a notoriously Troubled Production that included losing Mel Gibson, plus tension between Tom Hardy and fellow star Charlize Theron and director, George Miller. The fact that it was described as a film-long chase sequence did not raise hopes. On release, it became a box office success, a cultural sensation, and one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2015, praised for its incredible action and near peerless storytelling. The praise and enthusiasm from critics and the public lasted all the way to the end of the year, becoming surprisingly one of the biggest award season contenders, eventually getting ten Oscar nominations including unheard of nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. It ended up winning six, nearly sweeping the technical categories — even outclassing The Force Awakens.
M3GAN met scathing assessments of its previews. Its plot about an evil doll who happened to be a robot read to many people as a Cliché Storm of both Sci-Fi Horror and Slasher Movies, its trailers suffered from Mood Whiplash and leaned heavily into camp, and it was being released in January, one of the all-time infamous Dump Months. When it was released, however, it was critically acclaimed for its ability to successfully blend its campier, more satirical elements with genuinely effective scares and social commentary, and it easily made its budget back many times over despite stiff competition from Avatar: The Way of Water, such that a sequel was announced less than two weeks after it premiered.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: Mission: Impossible III had performed below expectations at the box office, as well as Tom Cruise's last few films, and many prognosticators were surprised the studio had approved of a fourth film. Jeremy Renner was also cast as a potential replacement for Cruise in the event they replaced him for the sequel. Box office analysts thought it was a bad move for Paramount to schedule the film for Christmas weekend, already crowded with other releases, and a season that wasn't known for being fertile ground for action films. Strong word of mouth, with many calling it the best film of the series, propelled it to a strong box office, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of the year and easily leading Christmas weekend. It led to twomore follow-ups that were just as successful, if not more.
Before A Nightmare on Elm Street became a global hit and enduring horror film legacy, the movie was rejected by multiple studios because of the violent content.
Nosferatu faced legal troubles which led to many of its' copies to be destroyed but some survive. The ones that survived and was shown in theatres, it became a pop culture even in modern times and inspired countless TV series, films, and books.
Early trailers for Paddington focused on Toilet Humor and Paddington's Unintentional Uncanny Valley look, and with Colin Firth dropping out many thought the film would flop. When it actually came out it got rave reviews from critics on both sides of the Atlantic for being not only a delightfully sincere family film but also staying very true to the spirit of the books. It was also a financial success, grossing over $259 million with a $55 million budget.
A first-time director decides to shoot his own horror movie in his own house and goes so far as to remodel his own home to use as the setting and hire two unknown actors to play the lead characters. The film was shot in 7 days and was eventually submitted to the ScreamFest Horror Film Festival, where an executive from Miramax Films saw it and approached the director to rework it for Sundance (he rejected it). DreamWorks SKG saw potential in the film, but they didn't know what to do with it and decided to hold a test screening (which they thought initially bombed after people started walking out). The film was then delayed for several years while shakeups and management changes occurred at DreamWorks. In addition, this came during the time when the Saw franchise debuted to considerable commercial success. The film, Paranormal Activity, was eventually shunted out the door as a test for viral film promotion and was expected to flop against the then-released Saw VI. However, the $15,000 film was a smash hit with audiences, and eventually grossed $189 million in total, leading to two sequels, while Saw VI's disappointing box-office performance temporarily killed the series (there was one moreSaw movie a year later, followed by a seven-year gap between it and Jigsaw).
The Bengali coming-of-age film Pather Panchali had little hope of being recognized as more than a renegade/experimental Indian product. Upon release, it quickly made heaps of money everywhere it was shown and through this Satyajit Ray introduced the world to the possibilities of low-budget filmmaking.
Very few people seriously thought that Pokémon Detective Pikachu would actually be a hit. Not only was it a live-action film adaptation of a video game (a notorious curse in the film industry), but it was also an adaptation of a mostly obscure spinoff of a video game franchise that peaked in popularity in the West the late 1990s and hadn't had a theatrical film release in the West over a decade. It wasn't expected to be a Box Office Bomb, but it surprised a lot of people when it made back almost three times its budget and got positive reviews from most film critics—including plenty of critics who openly didn't like Pokémon.
A fictional example occurs in The Producers: a sneaky Broadway showman and his accountant/henchman put on a play called "Springtime for Hitler" specifically BECAUSE it will flop, allowing them to keep the excess money they raised but didn't need. Then they got a little surprise. (Ironically, the original 1968 film flopped, though it eventually became Vindicated by History and is now widely regarded as a huge classic).
Psycho faced Executive Meddling from executives who didn't like the movie's dark nature and even refused to give an adequate budget. It had a stellar box-office performance, received praise for the acting and music, and produced one of the most infamous fictional serial killers.
Pulp Fiction was initially rejected by Tristar as they found movie's plot to be "demented" and criticized the non-linear storytelling. The movie was picked up by Miramax, where it went on to both critical and commercial success, even being nominated for numerous awards.
Red, White & Royal Blue: While it was obvious at least some people would watch the movie, considering that the book it was adapted from was a major hit, there was some wariness about just how good it was going to be. Considering how common it is for romance novels adaptations to be phoned in cash grabs, and how the two leads had a spotty history with romance adaptations (having starred in controversial romances like The Kissing Booth and Purple Hearts (2022)), fans of the book and the general public ended up very pleasantly surprised with an overall very sweet adaptation that kept the tone and atmosphere of the book, helped by excellent performances all around and truly fantastic chemistry between the leads. Thanks to this, the film was a massive hit for Amazon Prime.
RoboCop was expected to be a relatively low-budget B-movie that wouldn't do very well at the box office, and director Paul Verhoeven turned it down at first and had to be convinced by his wife to take on the project. Instead, it became one of the biggest films of the year and a sci-fi classic and launched his career in Hollywood (previously he had only directed arthouse films in the Netherlands, and the last movie he had made, Flesh+Blood, was a huge flop).
Rocky Balboa was not only expected to fail at the box office but was also the butt of many jokes by comedians and film fans due to star/writer/director Sylvester Stallone's age (he was 59 at the time of the film's release) and lack of box office success in the early part of the 2000's. Then the film was released, had positive reception from critics and audiences, managed to be a profit-making hit for the studio and gave Stallone a Career Resurrection.
Fans thought that the seventh follow-up, Creed, was completely unnecessary because the previous entry wrapped everything up nicely. In addition, audiences and Stallone himself hated the last film that had Rocky as a mentor, so nobody thought a second attempt at that would work. Creed managed to gain even more critical acclaim than Rocky Balboa, turned in a respectable profit, and brought Stallone both a Golden Globe win and an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. It even had its ownsequels.
The first Saw movie had some concerning odds against them: Co-created by rookie filmmakers who struggled to finance the movie and find a producer. And even when they got both, they were given a small budget and 18 days to shoot their movie. Despite the challenges, Saw became an instant hit and spawned numerous spin-offs.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom initially faced a ban from the Italy government because of the content, as well as banned or edited in other countries. It was distributed and while it found its audience, it was still a polarizing piece of art that left its impact in the world, for better or worse depending on who you ask.
No one had faith in Smokey and the Bandit during production. The film's writer/director Hal Needham envisioned it as a cheap B- movie. Burt Reynolds hated the script, calling it the worst script he'd ever read, so much so that 90% of the dialogue in the final film was reported to be improvised. And the crew ran into budget issues as well. Who'd have guessed this would end up being the second-largest grossing film of 1977, beaten out only by Star Wars?
Sonic the Hedgehog had a massive uphill battle against it. For starters, it's a Live-Action Adaptation of a video game series (which hasn't had a great track record) of a character that, while still fairly popular, was way past his heyday. Then the project suffered a Channel Hop that saw the rights going from Sony to Paramount. And then the previews came out, with the first posters and trailers revealing an Unintentional Uncanny Valley humanoid design that horrified fans, non-fans, and Sonic's own creators, leading to a vocal backlash. To everyone's surprise, Paramount actually delayed the movie to February 2020 from its initial November 2019 release date to modify Sonic's design. When the second trailer dropped, revealing Sonic's new design, everyone greatly approved of it. And then the movie actually had surprisingly decent reviews and adoration from audiences, also breaking the video game movie curse by having the best opening of the genre (over $110 million worldwide over President's Day weekend, about $70 million domestically, surpassing Pokémon Detective Pikachu). By March 15th, it had made over $300 million globally and $145 million domestically, becoming the highest-grossing video game movie ever in the latter category. And this was without the aid of neither Japan nor China, both countries having to delay their movie premieres due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. And that's before a sequel two years later performed even better!
Sound of Freedom is a very strange one. The movie deals with a very difficult subject matter which is made even more difficult with the rise of conspiracy theories around the subject matter, which both the real life Timothy Ballard and the actor who portrays him (Jim Caviezel) peddle in. The movie was supposed to be released in 2019, but it was shelved for years before the creators got the rights to the film back and got Angel Films to release it on July 4, 2023. Somehow, the film ended up becoming a Sleeper Hit, earning back its $14 million budget three times over, holding out against Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and even improving against highly anticipated films Barbie and Oppenheimer. Of course, there are accusations of the box office numbers being inflated as videos of seemingly sold out showings actually having no one watching surfaced.
Nobody really thought Straight Outta Compton would be a hit, thanks to the subject matter, the R-rating, and the lack of established actors outside of Paul Giamatti. The film not only won rave reviews but is currently the highest grossing musical biopic of all time, even beating out Walk the Line.
Major studios rejected the offer of distributing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), fearing that even if the cartoon was still airing, its box office success was not guaranteed. New Line Cinema took a chance in it, and the film was one of the most profitable independent movies at the time, earning its $13.5 million budget 10 times over!
Virtually nobody in Hollywood saw the success of Twilight coming. When it was first picked up by Paramount, they tried turning it into an Action Horror movie that had more in common with Underworld than the book it was based on, thinking that a vampire romance movie, without any horror elements, would bomb. Reportedly, after Stephenie Meyer took Twilight to the smaller studio Summit Entertainment, where it became one of the biggest hits of 2008 despite a then-unknown cast and low budget, heads rolled at Paramount as executives argued over who let the film slip through their grasp.
Uncharted: After being in Development Hell for more than a decade, paired with unfavorable opinions about casting and execution, one would think this would be a low-grossing Dump Month film riding off IP and Tom Holland's star power. However, the film managed to overperform its Presidents Day weekend box office expectation of 30 million dollars domestically, grossing over 51 million dollars instead. That weekend's global gross was $139M, which ballooned to 395.1M, against a 120M budget. In a company email, Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman was quick to label a film "a movie franchise" as a result.
Venom: Between controversial staffing (most infamously being produced by Avi Arad, whose meddling sank the Spider-Man film franchise twice, as well as Amy Pascal, who became widely hated online for greenlighting Ghostbusters (2016), and being greenlit by the aforementioned Tom Rothman), multiple online backlashes to various decisions (especially the decision to completely divorce Venom from Spider-Man, which led to comparisons to Catwoman, which also infamously divorced its titular character from Batman), and an array of trailers with questionable taglines and some awkward scenes and dialogue, plus a smear campaign by fans of Lady Gaga to support their star's competing film, nobody expected Venom to get a box office of $370 million, nearly four times its budget, before a fortnight was over.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was expected to flop, particularly after the stories leaked to the press about the quarreling between stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but the film turned out to be a critical and commercial hit, even earning an Oscar nomination for Davis.
, when he was an executive at Miramax, being one of the many distributors who passed on The Blair Witch Project. Artisan bought the rights after Sundance for a relatively cheap $1.1 million, and the result made nearly $250 million worldwide, over 4,000 times its original budget.