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These movies were surprise hits beyond anyone's wildest predictions.
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00:00We as moviegoers have a tendency to think that we can peg a smash hit or a disastrous flop from a mile away.
00:07But there are also those fascinating times when a film ends up blowing past all but the most optimistic of expectations.
00:14For one of many reasons, these films all surged in popularity in ways nobody could have ever anticipated.
00:21Enough that many of them remain bewildering outliers to this very day.
00:24So with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture and let's take a look at some movies way more successful than anyone expected.
00:32Starting with John Wick.
00:34It's no exaggeration to say that expectations were through the floor for John Wick prior to its release.
00:40Given that Keanu Reeves was well and truly in the middle of his flop era by 2014,
00:46having him star in a revenge film about a dead dog didn't exactly inspire much confidence.
00:51It also didn't help that the film was helmed by first-time stuntman-turned-filmmaker Chad Stahelski.
00:57And Lionsgate's marketing was so low-key that they seemed almost embarrassed by it.
01:02Hell, we even included John Wick on our own list of films which might score 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.
01:09And as silly as that seems in retrospect, Reeves' straights were dire enough at that point that it was a totally reasonable prediction.
01:16But John Wick was one of 2014's most unexpected hits, grossing a tidy $86 million on a $30 million budget,
01:25boosted by strong reviews for the film's kinetic action, smart world-building, and Reeves' entertainingly stoic performance.
01:32The rest, as they say, is history.
01:34Across four main movies and a recent spin-off, the John Wick IP has grossed $1.16 billion worldwide.
01:41Who could have ever predicted that from a film which, in the eyes of many, looked like VOD action fodder at first glance?
01:49K-pop Demon Hunters
01:50And now for the most recent entry on this list, albeit a film whose enormous success can't be measured by box office bucks.
01:59Animated musical fantasy K-pop Demon Hunters was originally produced by Sony,
02:03who ultimately decided to sell the distribution rights to Netflix for a direct-to-streaming release with a minimal theatrical engagement.
02:11And within two months of its release on the streaming platform,
02:14the film had surpassed Red Notice as the most-watched Netflix original of all time.
02:19And it later overtook TV series Squid Game as Netflix's most-watched title ever.
02:24As of mid-September, K-pop Demon Hunters has racked up more than 300 million views,
02:30a practically unthinkable number when the film released back in June,
02:34even accepting the enormous popularity of both animation and Korean media on Netflix.
02:39The mesmerising viewership gave Sony a moment for pause,
02:42for while Netflix reportedly paid them the film's entire $100 million budget,
02:47they couldn't help but wonder if a theatrical release would have been the more profitable call.
02:51After all, despite being readily available on Netflix,
02:54the film's brief theatrical release in sing-along form grossed $19.2 million,
02:59making it the streamer's best-performing theatrical film,
03:02beating out Glass Onion, a Knives Out story.
03:05Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl
03:08In the months leading up to its release,
03:10few had high expectations for Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl.
03:14Believe it or not, swashbuckling adventure films were pretty much dead at the box office by the turn of the millennium,
03:20and it didn't help that this one was also based on a Disney theme park ride,
03:24hardly the most imaginative of things.
03:26And then there's the Johnny Depp factor.
03:28Depp simply hadn't proven himself to be a reliably bankable star by this point,
03:33despite his general popularity,
03:35and it was certainly not a given that he could help drive the $140 million blockbuster to success.
03:41But Pirates of the Caribbean basically did everything right.
03:44It was a fun, well-made movie with a genuinely electrifying lead performance,
03:49released in an uncrowded period of the release calendar,
03:52giving it an easy corridor to keep raking in that dough.
03:56By the end of its run, the film obliterated even optimistic expectations
04:00by grossing $654.3 million.
04:04And perhaps even more unexpectedly,
04:06nabbed Depp his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.
04:09Slumdog Millionaire
04:10Little ahead of Slumdog Millionaire's release indicated that it would be a sizable hit.
04:16This low-budget, India-set drama with no Hollywood actors based on niche source material
04:22invited low expectations from its original distributor, Warner Brothers.
04:26Enough that they intended to release it straight to video in the US.
04:30But mere days before its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival,
04:35the studio agreed to share theatrical distribution with Fox Searchlight.
04:39And a fire was well and truly lit once the film won the People's Choice Award
04:43at the Toronto International Film Festival,
04:46typically an indicator a film will be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.
04:49From here, Danny Boyle's $15 million film went on to gross a stupendous $378 million,
04:56almost as much as all of Boyle's seven prior films combined.
05:00But that wasn't all.
05:01It was then nominated for 10 Oscars,
05:03of which it won eight, including Best Picture and Best Director.
05:07Needless to say, everyone involved is probably relieved
05:10that Warner Brothers didn't send it direct to DVD domestically.
05:14Avatar
05:14Avatar basically offered up the final word
05:18on anyone who ever had the gall to doubt James Cameron.
05:21Despite the filmmaker's previous film, Titanic,
05:24breaking box office records following considerable pre-release skepticism,
05:28we all did the same song and dance for his 2009 sci-fi action film.
05:32Many commentators doubted the ability for Cameron to deliver another smash hit
05:37due to the ambition of its CGI-heavy execution,
05:40and also the apparently unappealing nature of the Na'vi,
05:42which some refer to as, quote,
05:44blue cat people.
05:45But of course, Cameron did it again,
05:47and because delivering a box office success wasn't enough,
05:49he ended up surpassing even the monstrous performance of Titanic.
05:54By the end of its original run,
05:55Avatar grossed an inconceivable $2.74 billion,
06:00almost a billion more than Titanic made on its initial release,
06:03in turn making it the highest-grossing film of all time.
06:06Though it was unseated from the number one spot by Avengers Endgame in 2019,
06:11Avatar decisively reclaimed it two years later with a re-release
06:15to coincide with sequel Avatar The Way of Water,
06:18which itself raked in an astonishing $2.32 billion.
06:22Now, it'll certainly be interesting to see if Cameron can deliver
06:25yet another $2 billion grosser with upcoming threequel Avatar Fire and Ash,
06:30but even if not,
06:31it's clearly going to make a sizable return on its $250 million budget.
06:35The Full Monty
06:36Underdog success stories don't get much more heartwarming than The Full Monty,
06:41a $3.5 million comedic drama about male strippers set in Sheffield
06:46without major stars that became a global mega hit.
06:50Even with the film's apparently limited appeal outside of the UK,
06:54it managed to strike one hell of a chord the world over,
06:57ultimately grossing an incredible $257.9 million
07:01and becoming the UK's highest-grossing film of all time,
07:05until being unseated by Titanic a short while later.
07:08This can be attributed to a few factors.
07:10The film's obvious novelty appeal,
07:11a cheeky and amusing marketing campaign,
07:14and strong word of mouth driven by its winning combination of comedy and heartfelt drama.
07:19More than all this, though,
07:20The Full Monty was also nominated for four Oscars,
07:23including Best Picture and Best Director,
07:26while winning a gong for Best Original Score.
07:28Considering the film's modest conception and how easily it could have slipped through the cracks
07:33with a lesser distributor,
07:34that's an overperformance for the ages.
07:37The Greatest Showman
07:38The Greatest Showman is one of the all-time great reminders
07:42that a film's opening weekend isn't everything.
07:45The Hugh Jackman-starring musical biopic opened under expectations,
07:49and with stiff competition from Star Wars The Last Jedi,
07:52Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle,
07:54and Pitch Perfect 3,
07:55many doubted its ability to leg out over the 2017 holiday period.
08:00But boosted by strong word of mouth,
08:02including an A cinema score,
08:04and the wider popularity of the film's soundtrack,
08:07it managed to hold incredibly well in subsequent weeks,
08:10ultimately legging out to a mighty $459 million worldwide.
08:15Given that many wrote the $84 million musical off after its first weekend,
08:19that's an exceptional result,
08:21and combined with the immense sales of the soundtrack,
08:23make it a massive hit far beyond most expectations.
08:27While The Greatest Showman is in many respects a box office anomaly,
08:31it does prove that films can initially underperform
08:34and still find their audience when the stars align.
08:37Austin Powers' The Spy Who Shagged Me
08:39Though Austin Powers' International Man of Mystery was a firm success,
08:44making $67.7 million against an $18 million budget,
08:48it was by no means a barnstorming breakout.
08:51While many attributed the film's underwhelming UK performance
08:54to the death of Princess Diana five days prior,
08:57few expected sequel Austin Powers' The Spy Who Shagged Me
09:00to blow up quite how it did.
09:02Even accepting that the first film performed extremely well on home video,
09:06nobody saw the sequel's final $312 million haul coming,
09:10more than 4.5 times the global gross of its predecessor.
09:14Now, to be clear,
09:15the second film's opening weekend surpassed the total gross of the original,
09:19and made it the biggest opening ever for a comedy film at the time.
09:23Austin Powers had well and truly become a pop culture icon then,
09:26and while three-quel Austin Powers in Gold Member
09:29didn't quite match this level of success,
09:31it still made off with a strong $296.9 million.
09:34Mike Myers has consistently talked up the prospect of a fourth film,
09:39though it's tough to imagine it enjoying the same level of success,
09:42no matter its quality.
09:44Taylor Swift The Era's Tour
09:45Even accepting that Taylor Swift is a peerlessly populated pop star,
09:50concert films inherently have a low ceiling placed on their box office potential.
09:55For one,
09:55they're only going to appeal to the particular fan base in question,
09:58with little chance of a wider breakout.
10:00And there are simply many who have no interest in watching a concert in a cinema.
10:05Even accepting that social media chatter indicated Taylor Swift The Era's Tour
10:08would be an easy hit from its $15 million budget,
10:12few anticipated the numbers it would end up pulling.
10:15Astonishingly,
10:15the film earned $100 million in global pre-sales a week before release,
10:20and went on to make a total of $267.1 million worldwide.
10:25This not only made it by far the highest grossing concert film of all time,
10:29almost tripling the $99 million grossed by 2011's Justin Bieber Never Say Never,
10:34but saw it outperform the likes of
10:37The Marvels,
10:38Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves,
10:40The Equalizer 3,
10:41Insidious The Red Door,
10:43Scream 6,
10:44and Killers of the Flower Moon.
10:45This performance is certainly an outlier that speaks to Swift's omnipresence in pop culture,
10:50but it goes without saying that if she ever releases a second concert film,
10:54such success won't be nearly as surprising.
10:57Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle
10:58Prior to its release,
11:00the deck really seemed stacked against Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle.
11:04For one,
11:05many were against the idea of a new Jumanji movie at all,
11:08following the tragic 2014 passing of Robin Williams.
11:12And a cast led by Jack Black, Dwayne Johnson, and Kevin Hart didn't win too many over.
11:17Then there was the utterly mediocre marketing,
11:19which made it look like just another generic jungle-set action film starring The Rock.
11:24And the fact that it was due to release just five days after Star Wars The Last Jedi,
11:28a move many called commercial suicide.
11:31But Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle received unexpectedly positive reviews for its fun
11:35body-swap gimmick and the performances of its four leads.
11:38And more surprisingly,
11:39managed to blow past box office tracking by grossing $962.5 million against a $90 million price tag.
11:47This mammoth performance has been heavily attributed to the polarising audience response
11:52to The Last Jedi, which as a result had less return business from audiences,
11:56prompting many of them to check out Jumanji instead during the holiday period.
12:01Though sequel Jumanji The Next Level didn't reach quite the same heights,
12:05it's still topped out at a very respectable $801.7 million,
12:09while a third film is expected to start shooting in November for a December 2026 release.
12:15For a film many pegged as a big fat flop right out of the gate, what an outcome!
12:21The Rocky Horror Picture Show
12:22The Rocky Horror Picture Show is one of the most popular cinematic musicals of all time.
12:28But nobody could have expected it to endure for over a half-century when it released so modestly in 1975.
12:35The $1.4 million film grossed only $1.2 million in its first year on release.
12:40But recognising its small but passionate fandom, Fox re-released it as a midnight movie,
12:45with audiences invited to dress up and participate in the experience through singing and dancing.
12:51This strange decision ultimately paid off handsomely,
12:54as word about the movie spread and its theatrical release continued for years.
12:59By 1980, The Rocky Horror Picture Show had grossed $68.6 million worldwide,
13:04and even as of 2025, it's still screening as a limited release,
13:08making it the longest-running theatrical release in cinema history.
13:11At present, its box office total sits at a ridiculous $166 million,
13:17and the film remains a genuine pop culture phenomenon,
13:20with annual conventions around the globe.
13:22At this point, would it honestly surprise anyone
13:25if Rocky Horror's theatrical run made it to the 100-year mark?
13:29Five Nights at Freddy's
13:30While anyone with their eyes open knew that Blumhouse's low-budget adaptation
13:35of hit video game Five Nights at Freddy's was going to be an easy success,
13:39few saw it doing quite this well considering the circumstances of its release.
13:44Even though the video game series has millions and millions of young fans,
13:48Universal made the surprise decision to simultaneously release the film in cinemas
13:52and on their US streaming service Peacock.
13:55It was therefore assumed that the day-and-date streaming release
13:58would put a massive dent in the film's box office,
14:01because why would people leave the house to see it in droves
14:04when they could just stay home and watch it instead?
14:07But Five Nights at Freddy's still ended up grossing a stupid good $297.1 million
14:13on a $20 million budget,
14:15enough that many wondered just how well it could have done with a theatrical-only release.
14:19Given that Five Nights at Freddy's 2 will be a cinema-exclusive release in December,
14:24it'll certainly be interesting to see if it can surpass its predecessor's total.
14:28My Big Fat Greek Wedding
14:30A hundred years from now, when all of us are dust,
14:33Box office analysts will still be trying to make sense of My Big Fat Greek Wedding's
14:38absolutely insane theatrical performance.
14:41Not a single living soul expected a $5 million rom-com about Greek-American culture
14:46starring a totally unknown lead actress to crack the 10 highest-grossing films of 2002.
14:52And yet, it did precisely that.
14:54Though it initially had a limited release,
14:57overwhelmingly positive word-of-mouth saw its theatrical run expand slowly over time.
15:02And it impressively kept drumming up enough business for IFC films to keep it in cinemas
15:07for the better part of a year.
15:08By the end of its run, My Big Fat Greek Wedding grossed an unimaginable $368.7 million globally,
15:16putting it ahead of much buzzier and more expensive 2002 releases like Minority Report,
15:21Catch Me If You Can, Chicago, and Gangs of New York.
15:24It's a feat that's even more jaw-dropping when you consider that the film never once took the number
15:29one spot, despite lingering around in cinemas for so long.
15:33Everything Everywhere All At Once
15:35Everything Everywhere All At Once is one of the most joyous success stories of the last decade.
15:41That such a profoundly weird movie could not only be a commercial smash hit,
15:46but also win the biggest honour in Hollywood.
15:48The Daniels' absurdist comedy drama could have so easily sunk like a stone at the box office.
15:53Like their first film, Swiss Army Man, which grossed just $5.8 million globally.
15:58But bolstered by rave reviews and Oscar buzz, it ended up legging out to a phenomenal $143.4
16:05million against a tight $25 million budget, making it A24's highest-grossing film to date.
16:12And because that wasn't enough of a win for such a strange piece of work,
16:15it was also nominated for 11 Oscars, ultimately winning seven, including Best Picture.
16:21It is, without any question at all, the most successful film in the history of cinema to
16:27feature a dildo fight. It's incredibly easy to picture an alternate scenario where Everything
16:31Everywhere All At Once flops at the box office, gets no awards attention, and only becomes a lauded
16:36cult classic over time.
16:38The Passion of the Christ
16:39Even though Christian-themed movies have a tendency to perform well at the box office,
16:45The Passion of the Christ had so, so much working against it in theory.
16:49For one, it was an ultra-violent, R-rated depiction of the events leading up to Jesus' death.
16:55And to make it even more unpalatable to the masses, it wasn't shot in English,
16:59with most of the dialogue instead being spoken in Aramaic.
17:02But the appeal of a big-budget Jesus movie combined with the plaudits of director Mel Gibson
17:08was evidently enough to overcome these obstacles.
17:11Even so, few could have expected the $30 million epic biblical drama to end up grossing an astonishing
17:17$612.1 million. Almost triple the box office haul of Gibson's best picture-winning previous film,
17:24Braveheart. This figure also made it the highest grossing Christian film, independent film,
17:29and R-rated film of all time. And impressively, it still holds the first two records. A testament to
17:35how successful a film can be when it delivers a powerful experience to a traditionally underserved
17:41demographic. Top Gun Maverick
17:43Top Gun Maverick is all-timer proof that all the box office analysis in the world doesn't mean squat
17:49if a well-made, exciting film connects with audiences young and old.
17:53When the belated action sequel was first announced, if someone told you it would end up grossing just
17:58shy of $1.5 billion globally and receive six Oscar nominations including Best Picture,
18:04you surely would have laughed. Given the film's sizable $177 million budget and dubious popularity
18:10of Top Gun with younger audiences, many observers expected it to have a tough road to profitability,
18:16and if it were lucky, it might land around the $500 million mark.
18:20But Maverick almost made triple that figure, in large part because the film found a way to appeal
18:25to both older fans of the original and those totally fresh to the IP. The nostalgia factor lured in OG
18:31fans, while the thrilling action and young ensemble cast helped it attract younger viewers,
18:36which combined with overwhelmingly positive critical reviews and a consensus that the spectacle
18:41needed to be seen on the big screen drove it to absurd commercial success.
18:47Napoleon Dynamite
18:48Napoleon Dynamite is pretty much the archetypal indie success story, with Jared Hess's $400,000 comedy
18:55premiering at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where it was acquired by Fox Searchlight
19:01Pictures. Despite being given a highly limited release that summer, the film's uniquely quirky
19:06sense of humour made it a hit with counterculture types, serving as a welcome alternative to the
19:12slew of broad generic comedies dominating multiplexes at the time. Even so, few could have anticipated
19:18that Napoleon Dynamite would be anything more than a modest success, perhaps grossing $5 million
19:24and then disappearing from sight. But it managed to stick around and became enough of a genuine
19:29oddball phenomenon in its own right that it ended its run at $46.1 million. That's more than 115
19:37times its production budget. Since then, Napoleon Dynamite has remained a popular cult film,
19:43and a line of merchandise and even a short-lived animated series. A basically unimaginable outcome
19:49for an aggressively weird indie comedy with no-name actors. Anyone but you.
19:54Though the rom-com was once upon a time a reliable box office cornerstone, over the past decade it
20:01suffered considerably, in large part because of the streaming boom. Given that rom-coms are
20:06historically relatively cheap to make and less reliant on visual spectacle than most other genres,
20:11studios began increasingly selling them off to streamers for an easy buck. And this was massively
20:16accelerated by the impact of the pandemic. Since 2020, there have been desperately few theatrically
20:23released rom-coms, and even less which have actually proven commercially successful.
20:27And so, few were expecting much from Anyone But You. The Glenn Powell and Sidney Sweeney starring romp,
20:33which many dismissed as a glorified streaming movie, and which many doubted offered enough to lure
20:39audiences out of the house. Yet despite releasing within earshot of blockbusters like Wonka and Aquaman
20:45and The Lost Kingdom, Anyone But You grossed a stonking $220.3 million against a tight $25 million
20:52budget. The film's success proved that there was still an appetite for theatrical rom-coms
20:57if they starred buzzy actors. Middling critical reviews be damned.
21:01Fahrenheit 9-11
21:03Even accepting that pop documentaries like Bowling for Columbine and Super Size Me could still perform
21:09well at the box office in the early 2000s. It's truly bewildering that Michael Moore's Iraq war
21:15documentary Fahrenheit 9-11 grossed $222.4 million on a mere $6 million budget. Just try and imagine a
21:23documentary in 2025 grossing even 10% of that figure. Because with streamers largely cornering
21:29the market on documentary distribution nowadays, it just isn't something most folk are prepared to
21:34leave the house for anymore, especially post-pandemic. But Fahrenheit 9-11's performance
21:39is still a massive outlier even for the time, a testament to the tense political climate of the
21:44period in the lead up to the US presidential election. George W. Bush's presidency was such
21:49a global spectacle, even for the standards of American presidents, that the documentary
21:54crossed over into mainstream appeal worldwide, surely aided by Moore's own celebrity as a
21:59documentarian and the film's cuttingly humorous tone. Yet it goes without saying that cinema will
22:05probably never see a politically themed documentary, or actually any documentary, have this kind of
22:12box office juice ever again. Case in point, even Moore's own 2018 docu-sequel Fahrenheit 11-9
22:19grossed just $6.7 million. And finally, Taken. On paper, absolutely nothing indicated that Taken
22:26would be anything more than a modest success. Taking dramatic actor Liam Neeson and shoving
22:32him into a relatively low-budget, seemingly generic revenge thriller didn't scream box office dynamite
22:38to many people. Hell, even Neeson himself recently confessed that he expected the film to go direct
22:43to video, which clearly would have been a huge mistake. Taken instead performed well internationally,
22:48but was an absolute monster domestically, ultimately grossing a huge $226.8 million
22:55on a $25 million budget. This was down to a few factors. Neeson's reinvention as an action hero
23:02was a huge novelty for middle-aged audiences. It was packed with intense action sequences,
23:08and of course, Neeson has a number of memorable one-liners which swiftly penetrated into general
23:13culture. In a period where modestly budgeted thrillers were starting to decline commercially,
23:18Taken came along and satisfied demand by simply being a memorable and well-crafted film with a popular
23:24A-lister steering the ship. Its success, of course, led to two mostly terrible sequels,
23:29with the trilogy's collective haul totalling $929 million, while Neeson enjoyed a late-stage
23:35career reboot and has starred in more than 25 action-thrillers since.
23:40Thank you very much.
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