20 Movies Way More Successful Than Anyone Expected
1. Taken
On paper, absolutely nothing indicated that Taken would be anything more than a modest success.
Taking Dramatic Actor Liam Neeson and shoving him into a relatively low-budget, seemingly generic revenge thriller didn't scream box office dynamite to many.
Hell, even Neeson himself recently confessed that he expected the film to go direct to video, which clearly would've been a huge mistake.
Taken instead performed well internationally but was an absolute monster domestically, ultimately grossing a huge $226.8 million on a $25 million budget.
This was down to a few factors - Neeson's reinvention as an action hero was a huge novelty for middle-aged audiences, it was packed with intense action sequences, and of course, Neeson has a number of memorable one-liners which swiftly penetrated into general culture.
In a period where modestly budgeted thrillers were starting to decline commercially, Taken came along and satisfied demand by simply being a memorable and well-crafted film with a popular A-lister steering the ship.
Its success of course led to two (mostly terrible) sequels, with the trilogy's collective haul totalling $929 million, while Neeson enjoyed a late-stage career reboot and has starred in more than 25 action thrillers since.