20 Movies Way More Successful Than Anyone Expected
These movies were surprise hits beyond anyone's wildest predictions.
We as moviegoers have a tendency to think that we can peg a smash hit or a disastrous flop from a mile away, and to be fair, that often tends to be the case.
But there are also those fascinating times when a film ends up blowing past all but the most optimistic of expectations, in turn surprising every single one of us.
For one of many reasons, these 20 films all surged in popularity in ways nobody could've ever anticipated, enough that many of them remain bewildering outliers to this very day.
As for why we underestimated them? Maybe the box office tracking numbers just weren't there, perhaps the marketing wasn't up to much, or it just didn't seem like the material would appeal to the masses.
But these films proved just about everyone wrong, dominating the box office and/or home video charts despite the pre-release expectation that they would perform modestly at best, if not outright flop.
Above all else it goes to show that no matter how sure we are about a film's performance, there's always the possibility that we end up eating crow...
20. John Wick
It's no exaggeration to say that expectations were through the floor for John Wick prior to its release.
Given that Keanu Reeves was well and truly in the middle of his flop era by 2014, having him star in a revenge film about a dead dog didn't exactly inspire much confidence.
It also didn't help that the film was helmed by first-time stuntman-turned-filmmaker Chad Stahelski, and Lionsgate's marketing was so low-key that they seemed almost embarrassed by it.
Hell, we even included John Wick on our own list of films which might score 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, and as silly as that seems in retrospect, Reeves' straits were dire enough at that point that it was a totally reasonable prediction.
But John Wick was one of 2014's most unexpected hits, grossing a tidy $86 million on a $30 million budget, boosted by strong reviews for the film's kinetic action, smart world-building, and Reeves' entertainingly stoic performance.
The rest, as they say, is history - across four main movies and a recent spin-off, the John Wick IP has grossed $1.16 billion worldwide.
Who could've ever predicted that from a film which, in the eyes of many, looked like VOD action fodder at first glance?