10 Box Office Hits That Everybody Expected To Be Huge Flops

10. World War Z

"Bad times," intoned the Daily Mail ominously in an article published in 2013 after the budget for the Brad Pitt zombie vehicle World War Z reached the $170 million mark. The article continued, voicing concerns anyone who'd followed the production no doubt echoed, with "could World War Z be the most expensive flop in cinematic history?" If anything is likely to sound the death knell of an upcoming movie, it's a combination of a bloated budget and a hectic, uncoordinated production, which World War Z had both of in spades. Well-publicised differences of opinion between Pitt - who was bankrolling much of the production through his company Plan B - and director Marc Foster only compounded expectations of a huge flop. And then World War Z hit the theatres and the unmitigated disaster everyone was expecting failed to materialise. While the film was hardly a masterpiece of the zombie genre, with $540 million in global sales the doubters were proven wrong. In the words of Variety, World War Z had become a bona-fide hit.