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

If you thought that a movie like The Fast and the Furious had a big enough motor under the hood to carry it through six additional sequels, then you deserve a prize. How this little story about a gang of street racers got stretched into Universal's biggest franchise of all time is nothing short of mind-boggling.

Not only did it withstand losing one of its biggest stars for a tepid, downright embarrassing sequel, but it somehow continued hummed along after moving the story to Tokyo and replacing the entire cast, essentially making the Fast and Furious moniker nothing more than a marketable tag like National Lampoon's or American Pie.

It's especially odd, considering the budget for the first instalment was a relatively paltry $38 million. And watching the original 15 years later, it's easy to see how tame the action sequences and stunt work is compared to the over-the-top scenes that ooze out of the later sequels.

But unlike the rougher first film, modern Fast and Furious movies are top-to-bottom stunts, filmed with a slickness Michael Bay would gush over.

Vault chases, bus jumps, cliff-dangling parkour, boat jumps, exploding tankers, tower jumps, and skydiving off a crashing train are all commonplace in the series now. Each new movie seems to be dedicated to out-crazying the last instalment, going further and further away from the semi-gritty reality of the initial film.