8 Small-Scale Movies That Blew Up Into Blockbuster Action Franchises

Before Sylvester Stallone became the world's go-to butt-kicker, he was trying to position himself as a serious dramatic actor who also happened to have gigantic muscles a jawline that could cut through plexiglass. After some small roles in even smaller movies, Stallone decided the only way he was going to get a juicy part in Hollywood was to write it himself.

Sly allegedly whipped up the script for Rocky in about four days - a script that was, naturally, heavily rewritten later - and eventually convinced United Artists to but it and let him take the titular role. This of course launched the career of one of the biggest action stars of all time, and six sequels later, it's raked up about $1.5 billion on the way to becoming one of the most celebrated action movie franchises of all time.

Which is strange, considering that the first Rocky movie was an affecting psychological drama that's incredibly dark for a sports movie. It even features a scene that not-to-subtly implies Rocky rapes Adrian.

But everyone loves a good underdog story, and so the studio continued churning them out, trimming away some of the more unsavory bits with future instalments while escalating the more cartoonish elements until, eventually, nobody even thought it was weird that Mr. T and Hulk Hogan were in the same movie.