12 Blockbuster Movies Overshadowed By Unexpected Hits

Smokey and the Bandit spelt the end of the road for the biggest star in the world at that time. Leading man Burt Reynolds, who ruled much of 1970s cinema with his wry-humored machismo, had gotten comfortable in the comedy-action genre, until this flick didn't dominate like it should've. Directed by stuntman Hal Needham (his directorial debut), Smokey and the Bandit follows a bootleg beer journey across state lines with diversions and near misses along the way. Opposite Reynolds as “The Bandit” were Jackie Gleason as Sheriff “Smokey Bear” Justice and Sally Field as “Frog,” who had taken the role so as to improve her reputation as an attractive star. Although Smokey and the Bandit was a massive hit that generated two sequels, it remained overshadowed by a competitor that came completely out of left field. Nobody could have seen Star Wars - a space fantasy film starring a cast of young unknown actors - coming in quite the way it did. Though it may be hard to believe in retrospect, George Lucas's first film (retroactively dubbed Episode IV - A New Hope) in the now-massive franchise was hardly expected to succeed, let alone to overshadow such a major release at the same time. The success of Star Wars changed the film industry forever, propagating a universe of sequels and spin-offs which are assumed blockbusters of subsequent decades.

Three Men and a Little Lady was expected to become a blockbuster on the back of its predecessor, Three Men and a Baby, the number one box office hit of 1987 in the US. In the first film, directed by Leonard Nimoy (AKA Star Trek's Spock), a baby is left in the care of three apartment-sharing bachelors played by Ted Danson, Steve Guttenberg, and Tom Selleck. Mishaps and misunderstandings ensue as all three men develop a paternal relationship with the child. The sequel was directed by Emile Ardolino, who had a big hit behind him in Dirty Dancing. Three Men and a Little Lady picks up a few years later, wherein the baby is now five years old, living with her three dads and her mother Sylvia (Nancy Travis). When Sylvia becomes engaged to Edward (Christopher Cazenove), the posh English love rival of Peter (Selleck), the family dynamic is threatened. Audiences were evidently less interested in the little lady than the baby, and the sequel made less than half the amount of the first film. Meanwhile, a simultaneous release elbowed it to the curb. Home Alone, written by John Hughes and directed by Christopher Columbus, begins with eight-year-old Kevin McCallister (played by 1990s golden boy Macaulay Culkin) left alone with no supervision after his family departs for a holiday vacation without him. In their absence, Kevin crafts imaginative traps to fend off a pair of house burglars. Home Alone earned nearly $300 million domestically and over $475 million worldwide, kicking off a series of sequels and a major run of fame for Culkin.

In the couple of years before the 2002 release of rom-com Life or Something Like It, Angelina Jolie had won multiple awards for Gia and Girl Interrupted, including an Oscar for the latter. Portraying an ambitious blond bombshell in Life or Something Like It suited Jolie's femme fatale public persona at the time, so every expectation was that this film would succeed. The story begins with Seattle TV reporter Lanie Kerrigan (Jolie) interviewing Jack (Tony Shalhoub), a self-professed prophet, live on-air. When he predicts her impending death, panic-stricken Kerrigan spends the rest of the film reevaluating her life and her relationships, before finding romance with her workplace enemy, cameraman Pete Scanlon (Edward Burns). The attempts at romance and comedy didn't go over well, resulting in a shockingly poor box office gross of $16 million total against a budget of $40 million. Another rom-com released in the same month proved far more successful. Made on a tiny $5 million budget, My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a surprise hit, making over $240 million. Written by and starring Nia Vardalos, the plot revolves around the inexperienced and family-oriented Toula (Vardalos), who pursues a career outside of her family's Greek restaurant, has a makeover, and falls in love with a handsome non-Greek man called Ian (John Corbett). In order to help Toula's family to accept Ian, he and Toula get hitched in a big fat Greek wedding. Unlike Life or Something Like It, Vardalos's film has a personal touch and the requisite rom-com warmth to connect with wide audiences.

The title of Land of the Lost unwittingly forecasted the film's fate. Based on the 1970s TV series about a family who are transported via a vortex to a hostile dimension that shares similarities with prehistoric Earth, the 2009 film used the science fiction premise as a backdrop while leaning into broad comedy. In the movie version, a vortex transports scientist Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell), his assistant Holly (Anna Friel), and theme park owner Will (Danny McBride) to the aforementioned dimension, from where they spend the rest of the film trying to get back home. Disappointingly, Ferrell's comic talents were not well utilized here. Land of the Lost quickly vanished except for several Golden Raspberry Award nominations, taking home the award for Worst Remake, Rip-off or Sequel. On the box office front, the failure was even worse - the film didn't even come close to recouping its $100 million budget. The box office expectations for The Hangover were much lower. With an ensemble cast of promising actors (including Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zack Galifianakis), whose careers were yet to hit their pinnacle, The Hangover was framed by a drunken comic premise in which a group of bachelor party friends, partying in Las Vegas, wake up with a missing groom and little memory of the night before. The film became a monster hit. Farce, gross-out comedy, and the unhinged antics of Ken Jeong as gangster Mr. Chow set The Hangover trilogy in motion. The first film alone took in $277 million in domestic box office earnings and nearly $470 million worldwide.

Audiences had come to expect purposefully ostentatious films from director Baz Luhrmann long before Australia. His previous films, Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, and Moulin Rouge! each provided a heady mix of visual and aural stimulation, and all were quite well-received. Australia cast two megastars, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, as English aristocrat Lady Sarah Asley and The Drover, respectively. With World War II looming, the pair embark on an epic journey across the Australian Outback to a cattle sale, finding a love story along the way. Despite the scenic feast for the eyes and the big name leads, Australia under-performed at the box office. Though its international ticket sales fared better than US sales, many criticized the film's sheer melodrama and length (a whopping 165 minutes). At the same time, Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle, about a teenager, Jamal (Dev Patel), recalling the tragedies and criminal escapades that led to him being a knowledgeable contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, became a sleeper hit, winning eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In contrast to Australia, Slumdog Millionaire cast relative unknowns, Patel and Freida Pinto, as the film's romantic leads. The hit film gave a fresh and colorful spin on the rags to riches story and pulled $378 million in worldwide box office earnings.

Hidalgo, a loosely biographical adventure film, is both a Western and a swashbuckler. Viggo Mortensen plays Frank Hopkins, a long-distance horseman and Buffalo Bill's Wild West showman, who does the unthinkable by racing his mustang, Hidalgo, against superior Arabian horses across Saudi Arabia's Najd desert. In 2004, Mortensen was fresh off the extraordinarily successful Lord of the Rings trilogy, and consequently, a sought-after actor. Additionally, the casting of Omar Sharif as Sheikh Riyadh, who orchestrates the long-distance race, harkens back to the sweeping epic that was Lawrence of Arabia. Despite some positive reviews, in the US, the film's takings fell far under its $100 million budget and lagged behind another type of whipping: not of horses, but Jesus, in The Passion of the Christ. In a very literal, relentless manner, director Mel Gibson spellbound his audience with the torture and humiliation of Jesus of Nazareth (Jim Caviezel) during the last 12 hours of his life. Though one might not expect such a dark depiction of the religious story to strike a chord with viewers, The Passion of the Christ made over $370 million in the US and remains one of the most successful Christian films ever made.

In John Carter, the eponymous hero (played by Taylor Kitsch) is transported from the Reconstruction era in the Arizona Territory to Barsoom (Mars). Based on the early 20th-century Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom book series, John Carter was meant to appeal to fans of the epic sci-fi fantasy genre while capitalizing on Kitsch's rising fame (thanks to several years on the TV series Friday Night Lights). Expectations were especially high since a John Carter movie adaptation had been in the works since the 1930s. In the end, the would-be blockbuster barely earned back its massive budget at the box office, thanks to unwieldy special effects, and competition from two very different films. The Lorax, a computer-animated film based on the Dr. Seuss book of the same name, is an unabashed yet topical rallying cry for environmental activism. Balanced out by songs and Danny DeVito (the Lorax) injecting fun into the customary Seuss rhyming couplets, the story of a young boy embarking on a quest to restore the natural world appealed to wider audiences, making almost three times as much as John Carter in its opening weekend. Likewise, 21 Jump Street, based on the 1987 TV series starring Johnny Depp, was a refreshingly funny film, with Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as two undercover cops infiltrating a high school for a case. Though it was also based on an existing property, it was not nearly as highly anticipated as John Carter, and, unlike the sci-fi flop, the success of 21 Jump Street was substantial enough to afford a sequel.

In 2005, somewhere in the middle of Matthew McConaughey's rom-com domination, he starred in the notorious action-adventure flop Sahara. McConaughey played United States Air Force veteran and marine engineer Dirk Pitt, who, with the help of trusty sidekick Al Giordino (Steve Zahn) and Dr. Eva Rojas (Penélope Cruz), goes on a quest to find a gold-filled Confederate ship buried in the Sahara desert. A throwback to the Old Hollywood adventure genre, the film's light-hearted capers together with its established leading man didn't spell success - it had a paltry $18 million opening weekend, and ultimately failed to earn back its budget of $130 million at the box office. Meanwhile, two other films released at the same time exceeded their expectations. Sin City, a series of after-dark noir vignettes based on Frank Miller's comic book series, was directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez. Catching eyes by sticking out from other offerings, Sin City benefited from its visually distinct style and color palette and pulled $28 million in its first weekend. In the meantime, The Amityville Horror cast a dark shadow over Sahara. Based on the original novel about the paranormal experiences of a family who move into a Long Island house after a mass murder, The Amityville Horror, starring Ryan Reynolds, was a critical failure but a box office triumph, earning its modest budget back many times over.

Lake Placid arrived on the tail-end of the 1990s with a cool all-star cast specific to that decade. Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, and Oliver Platt had enough combined star power to turn a profit. Meanwhile, Irish actor Brendan Gleeson played against type as the local sheriff, who, along with a panicked group of Maine residents and specialists, attempts to get to the bottom of a series of gruesome deaths caused by a peckish, prehistoric crocodile. Played for laughs and scares, Lake Placid scored low on both fronts, with a mediocre worldwide gross of $56 million against a $30 million budget. Another horror film, bereft of laughs and intentionally so, came out of left field and quickly outdistanced Lake Placid. Made on a shoe-string budget by first time writer-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez and starring unknown actors, The Blair Witch Project follows a trio of film students who head to the woods to make a documentary about a legendary killer. Kick-starting the modern spate of found footage horror films, The Blair Witch Project generated massive hype - and massive sales - by marketing the film as if the characters were real people who had disappeared after filming this indie documentary. The clever premise, brilliant marketing, and low budget made The Blair Witch Project one of the most unexpectedly profitable movies of all time, pulling in almost $250 million worldwide against a production budget of $60,000.

In Guy Richie's adaptation of the 1960s TV series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the intelligence and security agencies of the US and USSR form an unlikely alliance in order to stop master criminals from causing Cold War chaos with nuclear weapons. With Richie coming off of two consecutive Sherlock Holmes hits and a cast of fresh, attractive stars (including Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, and Alicia Vikander), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. should have cleaned up at the box office. Instead, the flop earned just over $13 million in its opening weekend, trounced by Straight Outta Compton. By virtue of a compellin biographical story and an invigorating pace thanks to F. Gary Gray's direction, Straight Outta Compton was different from the usual, cliched music biopic. Produced by N.W.A. members Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, the film offered something bigger than the rise of a ground-breaking hip hop act. Aside from the standard music biopic corporate versus artistic battles, Straight Outta Compton dealt head-on with race relations and police brutality while depicting young men getting the better of music industry gatekeepers. This smart and stylistic film offered much more to mull over than Ritchie's overreaching efforts, and grossed over four times as much in its opening weekend.

The Lone Ranger had all the required components of a sure-fire hit. Based on the 1950s TV series of the same name, the 2013 film is about the a Texas Ranger, John Reid (Armie Hammer), who gains a spiritual power to avoid defeat in battle. Alongside his vigilante partner, Tonto (Johnny Depp), he hunts outlaws in the Old West. Director Gore Verbinski was an accomplice in Depp's mega-stardom due to directing the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films. Nonetheless, even the addition of producer Jerry Bruckheimer's high-concept expertise couldn't prevent The Lone Ranger from failure. The momentum faltered, and the 2013 Lone Ranger ended up enduring a similar fate to the 1981 movie adaptation, The Legend of the Lone Ranger, which sank without a trace (so much so that lead actor, Klinton Spilsbury, never appeared in another film). Condemned by critics for its never-ending action sequences, The Lone Ranger was overshadowed by the success of a female cop buddy action comedy: The Heat, starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy as two mismatched law enforcers on the tail of a Boston mobster. Paul Feig, known for directing female-led comedies (Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters, Snatched, A Simple Favor), allowed his actors to improvise, resulting in some of the funniest scenes of the film. Contrary to the style over substance criticisms directed at The Lone Ranger, the action in The Heat was secondary to the charm of its lead actors, which allowed the comedy to nearly recoup its $43 million budget within its opening weekend before continuing to a solidly profitable run.

In 2011's Green Lantern, based on the DC comic series of the same name, rising star Ryan Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, who, after receiving superpowers from a ring, goes after supervillain Parallax as part of an intergalactic police force called Green Lantern Corps. The supporting cast was made up of largely established actors including Tim Robbins, Mark Strong, Angela Bassett, Geoffrey Rush, and Peter Sarsgaard. To add to the sure-fire hit formula, Warner Brothers, the purveyors of DC on the screen, had scored Oscar wins just a couple of years before with Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. However, a weak script and clunky effects meant that Green Lantern, which cost $200 million to make, earned just over half that amount domestically. At the time of its release, another film, Super 8, did much better with audiences and critics. Written and directed by J.J. Abrams, the deliberately nostalgic, Spielberg-produced sci-fi film tells the story of a group of teenagers investigating extraterrestrial occurrences in their town through film footage. Super 8 outperformed Green Lantern in initial earnings, on top of having a much smaller budget. In its second week of release, Green Lantern was bested by another improbable contender, Bad Teacher, about the redemptive transformation of a manipulative and self-serving schoolteacher, Elizabeth Halsey, played with wicked enthusiasm by Cameron Diaz. At the US box office, Bad Teacher more than quintupled its $20 million budget.