13 Movies You Presumed Were Massive Flops (That Really Weren't)

6. Batman & Robin

Batman and Robin is a textbook example of a film so unconscionably awful that people don't even care about box office figures. The film was universally reviled by fans and critics alike, and is continually regarded as one of the worst films ever made. This ultimately caused it to fall considerably short of Batman Forever's box office gross ($336 million against a $100 million budget). Batman and Robin still took $238 million against a $125 million budget, so it wasn't an outright failure for Warner, even if the expectation for a sequel is naturally that it out-grosses the previous film.

The universal hatred aimed at the movie accounts largely for the reason a sequel never took off, and the franchise was thankfully rebooted by Christopher Nolan 8 years later. However, it made just north of $100 million over its original budget, and the movie was no doubt a piece of cake to sell to TV networks and on home video (at the time, anyway). That it has earned a perverse cult value in recent years also means that Warner has inevitably not suffered too hard for its disappointing box office.