10 Movies In 2017 That Should Have Flopped (But Didn't)

7. The Great Wall

Box Office: $334.5 million

Even though the Chinese box office is a mighty beast, it was still tough to believe that this absurd-looking Matt Damon-starring blockbuster was going to do much business.

With a heap of controversy surrounding Damon's "whitewashed" protagonist and a series of uninspired trailers that screamed "watch me on Netflix in six months!", it was so easy to believe the $150 million tentpole would pull in a limp $225-250 million and not a penny more.

Though The Great Wall wasn't a monstrous financial smash, it did gross $170.9 million in China alone, and easily doubled its budget worldwide, keeping it firmly out of flop territory.

While knee-jerks reports initially suggested the film was going to lose money, its performance in Russia, Mexico, Brazil, France and Germany helped push it far out of the red.

It's certainly not the towering hit Universal was counting on, but not the bust it could so easily have been either.