10 Films You Didn't Realise Secretly Bombed

Speaking of frequently talked-about movies, Mike Judge's Idiocracy is brought up constantly in political conversations, despite it barely making a splash when it was released in 2006.

Set in the year 2505, Idiocracy presents a frighteningly believable version of the future in which everything has been dumbed down to the lowest degree. Farmers water their crops with an energy drink, the world's most successful TV show is "Ow! My Balls!", and the President of America is a WrestleMania winner and porn superstar. Idiocracy is now considered a comedy classic, thanks in part to its seemingly prophetic vision, and to Terry Crews's hilarious performance as President Camacho.

Crews has his own theory as to why the film bombed, citing interference from corporations featured in the movie such as Starbucks. Using the café chain's real name, they depicted it as a business that sold lattés alongside "hot" lattés and "full body" lattés. Starbucks weren't too happy being portrayed as a coffee shop that offered "Extra Foam" for $500,000,000, so they pressured the studio into limiting the film's release to as few theatres as legally possibly and barely promoting it.

Judge himself has another theory: his last film, Office Space, also bombed, but developed a cult following through word-of-mouth and made its money back through home video sales. Judge believed the studio were hoping for the same thing again, so they decided to skip the part where they even bothered trying to market it, and just hoped that the cult following formed itself.