10 Movies In 2017 That Should Have Flopped (But Didn't)

That tasty Chinese box office to the rescue.

By Jack Pooley /

Paramount

Hollywood seems like such a predictable beast most of the time, where the financial success or failure of just about any film can be seen coming a mile off.

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Who didn't expect the likes of Beauty and the Beast, The Fate of the Furious, Despicable Me 3 and everything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to land among the year's highest-grossing films, for instance?

Occasionally, though, a movie will surprise everyone, either by wildly outpacing expectations or falling painfully short of them. In the case of these 10 films, prospects were looking increasingly slim and grim leading up to their release, yet against the odds, they managed to at least double their budgets and actually turn something resembling a real profit.

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Now, not all of these movies were stonking successes, but they did all manage to fight off the early doom and gloom about them bombing worldwide, or in the case of this list's lower-budget films, the expectation they'd make a few million bucks and quietly fade into the cinematic ether.

These films, from low-budget indies to $200+ million tentpoles, all proved the doubters wrong (or wrong enough, at least), even if you might be tempted to shake your head at China for the sheer number of awful movies they seem to bail out from box office ruin...

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