10 Movie Flops That Became Cult Classics

6. Donnie Darko (2001)

A movie with cult following written all over it, Donnie Darko would've gone straight to video but for Drew Barrymore's production company, who secured a limited theatrical release in October 2001. Shown in 58 cinemas, the movie made $517,375 during its four-week run, recouping only a fraction of its $4.5 million production budget.

After failing to generate much excitement among critics, and having proved a washout at Sundance, the film was left for dead until it found its true audience on VHS. Word of mouth was so strong, in fact, that the film was re-released in a two-disc "Director's Cut" edition in 2004, which reinstates twenty minutes of footage and helped bring about a critical re-evaluation.

"The movie remains impenetrable to logical analysis," wrote Roger Ebert, "but now I ask myself: what logical analysis would explain the presence of a 6 foot tall rabbit with what looks like the head of a science fiction insect?"