10 Huge Movie Box Office Hits NOBODY Saw Coming
These commercial juggernauts took everyone by surprise.
The health of the film industry can of course be best measured by the strength of its box office, and in an ideal world any given year will be littered with a diverse variety of smash hit releases. But Hollywood is in a strange state of change right now, spurred on by not only the impact of the pandemic but also changing audience habits and the sheer amount of high-quality entertainment competing for everyone's attention at all times.
All the same, it's still exciting to see a great film post jaw-droppingly unexpected numbers at the box office, confirming that there is indeed an audience appetite out there for well made, left-field pictures from the indie level all the way up to the biggest blockbusters. And sometimes a movie ends up performing so damn well that not even the most optimistic fan or bold industry analyst could've seen it coming.
That's totally true of the following ten features, each of which tore up the box office in ways nobody ever expected, confirming that as predictable as the box office game might seem at times, there's always the prospect of being pleasantly surprised...
10. The Beekeeper
Hands up anyone who had a junky Jason Statham-starring John Wick knock-off as the highest-grossing film for the first two months of 2024. While that might seem to indicate how dire the year has been for major releases so far, we shouldn't damn The Beekeeper with faint praise.
The surprisingly entertaining David Ayer-directed actioner slunk into cinemas this past January with little hype amid a mediocre marketing campaign and title which many struggled to take seriously. However, the box office might of the Dad Movie evidently shouldn't be underestimated, as amid unexpectedly positive reviews from most critics, the film has just crossed the $150 million mark globally.
Against its sensible $40 million budget, this is a major win and proof that Statham remains one of the few action star "brands" capable of selling a movie himself.
It's an especially unexpected haul given that, for all of the film's comparisons to the first John Wick, it's made considerably more than that film did ($86 million), and isn't that far off what John Wick: Chapter 2 pulled in ($174.3 million).
In short, The Beekeeper 2 is definitely going to happen. Who could've seen any of this coming?