10 Flop Movies That Somehow Got Sequels

Given the mighty box office success of 2014's Godzilla ($529 million) and Kong: Skull Island ($568.6 million), Warner Bros. were supremely confident that Godzilla sequel Godzilla: King of the Monsters would post similar - if not stronger - results.

But on a $200 million budget, King of the Monsters wildly underperformed, grossing a disappointing $387.3 million, due to mediocre reviews, a five-year gap since the last Godzilla film, and surely worst of all, releasing in the shadow of Avengers: Endgame.

Going by the 2.5x break-even rule typically applied to big-budget blockbusters heavily reliant on international box office, it ended up being over $100 million short of turning a profit.

And if circumstances were a little different, this could've easily signalled the premature conclusion of the MonsterVerse amid audience disinterest, but Warner Bros. had actually already finished shooting follow-up Godzilla vs. Kong about a month before King of the Monsters was even released.

And so, they had no choice but to push forward and hope that the new movie course-corrected the franchise - which, miraculously, it did.

Despite releasing during an especially fraught period of the pandemic, Godzilla vs. Kong grossed $470.1 million against a $200 million budget, as evidently restored Warner Bros.' confidence in the franchise and prompted them to greenlight the upcoming Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.