When we separate successful movies from failures, we look at a few key factors. Sometimes the movie just isn’t very good. Sometimes it was a critical bomb but a hit with the everyman. Sometimes the box office take is enough to say whether a movie was worth its own budget. Plenty of cinema’s great classics and modern masterpieces were immediate theatrical hits, from Gone With the Wind to Jurassic Park to Titanic to Transformers: Dark of the Moon. For others, it takes a little longer for everyone to catch up with their genius.
Some movies wait decades for their time to shine after being deemed critical and/or commercial flops. Some only have to wait until they’re released on DVD or streaming. When a flop unexpectedly, improbably turns into a hit, it’s a different story every time. Maybe a slew of DVD extras are enough to get a loyal fanbase to cough up a few million dollars. Maybe television syndication is enough to pull public domain movies out of the archive of no return. Maybe a movie that looked like a failure at first turns into a hit through steady ticket sales and word-of-mouth hype. These ten movies originally flopped during their theatrical run, but went on to become certified classics in their own right, proving that sometimes it’s worth it to just be patient.
Huge Hits That Initially Flopped in Theaters
These movies prove that sometimes word-of-mouth hype or a couple decades of reclamation can turn a flop into a runaway hit.
READ MORE: The Box Office Flops That Deserved to Be Big Hits
DVDs That Sold For Shocking Amounts of Money
These DVD discs and box sets recently sold for hundreds of dollars eBay.
![Tom Ellis’ CIA Kills off [Spoiler], Death Explained by Star](https://www.comingsoon.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2026/04/Untitled-design-7.jpg?resize=1200,630 "Tom Ellis’ CIA Kills off [Spoiler], Death Explained by Star")
