10 Mega-Successful Blockbusters Everyone Expected To Fail

5. The Harry Potter Series

Although the series has no totally brilliant entry (Alfonso Cuarón's Prisoner Of Azkaban came close), Harry Potter is certainly greater than the sum of its parts. Some entries skew too far from the respective book's wider themes or story (Half-Blood Prince all but axes Voldemort's origins) while the decision to split the final book in two gave an ending unsuitable for all but die-hard fans, but all in all it's a true success of blockbuster storytelling (and British filmmaking). There's no out-and-out bad flick in the series and to be able to tell such a comprehensive story on film is no mean feat. Although while there's clearly a lot of talent on show, a lot of the franchise's success is down to luck. When the project was in its infancy Warner Bros. were initially planning to do the films as CGI. Why? Well because of the growing child actors of course. Chris Columbus wasn't Richard Linklater; he couldn't just let the kids grow and release the film some time after a la Boyhood. To do the live-action franchise right required essentially doing a major movie a year and banking all the central cast going through puberty at roughly a similar rate. And while the series stumbled on the former early on, Warner managed to keep it so Harry, Ron, Hermione et al never looked out of place at school. That would have really messed up the series.