21 Box Office Hits That Have Been Seemingly Forgotten

Opening up at #1 at the box office and temporarily establishing the box office viability of motion capture animated films, Robert Zemeckis’ star-studded adaptation of the epic poem Beowulf has become a cinematic afterthought.

This action-thriller was meant to hand over the Bourne franchise to Jeremy Renner, who was simultaneously being courted as a major player in the Mission: Impossible films and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but its financial success was considered modest in comparison to its predecessors, leading Universal to hand the franchise right back to Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass a few years later with Legacy never to be acknowledged again.

No, this movie wasn’t as memorable as Skyscraper or Rampage, but this disaster flick starring The Rock nonetheless raked in a lot of cash in large-format theaters only to ultimately find its destiny on endless late-night cable presentations.

Over the past near decade, no one has been particularly clamoring to revisit Sam Raimi’s misguided Wizard of Oz reboot that attempted to capitalize on the CGI-drenched fantasy wave triggered by Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

Grossing $174 million worldwide, Identity Thief was another entry in Melissa McCarthy’s impressive hit streak that included Bridesmaids, Spy, The Heat, and Tammy, yet no one ever seems to mention, reference, or fondly recall this crude road trip comedy.

J.J. Abrams’ hoped that Super 8 would resonate with audiences in the same fashion of classic Steven Spielberg films like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but ultimately registered closer to Spielberg’s more forgettable fare like The Terminal and The BFG, despite accruing $260 million worldwide on a $50 million budget.

This tense action thriller was a hit with audiences, scoring $208 million worldwide, but its otherwise unremarkable nature has it borderline indistinguishable from Denzel’s other shoot-’em-up flick from the following year, 2 Guns.

Despite following the fairly reviled Da Vinci Code adaptation from 2006, Angels & Demons still nearly amassed $485 million worldwide, though it remains a barely bright spot in a forgettable franchise that barely made an impression on its target audience.

A massive hit with audiences and critics alike, Lee Daniels’ The Butler hasn’t really permeated the greater cultural conversation in the near decade that has followed, with the film’s stunt casting and dramatic heft never really being revered as much as its contemporaries (though this criticism can be levied against many of The Weinstein Company’s other successful Oscar hopefuls, such as The Artist and The King’s Speech).

Having garnered $336 million worldwide against a budget of $80 million, Dreamworks’ comic strip adaptation had an all-star cast and a warm reception from audiences, but the fact that it never spawned a sequel or any kind of substantial spin-off has relegated this animated flick to the depths of obscurity.

This romantic comedy headlined by the odd-couple duo of Queen Latifah and Steve Martin used its treasure trove of charm to amass nearly $165 million in the spring of 2004, but has rarely become a topic of discussion regarding the most memorable comedies of its time.

A surprise hit for Universal back in 2013, Lone Survivor is indeed thrilling and action-packed, but its dour true story and lack of particularly memorable performances have allowed its cinematic legacy to have been overshadowed by the likes of 2014’s American Sniper and 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge.

Still holding the distinctions of being the highest grossing documentary of all time and the only documentary to exceed over $100 million at the box office, Fahrenheit 9/11 is, of course, a product of its time, and the evolving political and media climates, paired with Michael Moore’s relative inactivity since 2018’s far less successful Fahrenheit 11/9, hasn’t helped the film age particularly well among subsequent generations.

Though stars Adam Sandler and Kevin James teaming with Wedding Crashers director Dennis Dugan bore fruit at the box office (more than $187 million, to be exact), the film’s somewhat problematic subject matter and the gargantuan success of the Grown Ups movies have since cemented this flick among Sandler’s less esteemed and revisited titles.

Though the solo Wolverine films have been defined by prestige (Logan) and disaster (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), the good-but-not-great middle child of the saga, the Japan-set The Wolverine, grossed more than $400 million yet remains chief among the least-discussed films of the 13-film X-Men franchise.

If you’re among the millions who showed up for Jurassic World: Dominion with the mindset of “wait, who is that?” or “wait, why is there a human clone?,” you’re probably not alone, as the second film in the Jurassic World banner doesn’t quite offer much in the way of rewatch value in spite of its astounding $1.3 billion box office haul, in addition to the fact that it’s been notoriously hard to find on the popular streaming services.

With an impressive cast led by Sam Worthington fresh off of his leading role in Avatar, Clash of the Titans earned just shy of $500 million from the worldwide box office, but as audience’s interest in fantasy content evolved in the years that followed due the immense popularity of Game of Thrones, this film and its less-successful sequel have struggled to remain culturally significant.

Paramount and Skydance’s big-budget third Star Trek film accrued more than $340 million globally, which was largely on par if slightly below its predecessors, but the franchise pissed off a large contingency of its audience with public deceptions about Star Trek Into Darkness and the departure of J.J. Abrams from the director’s chair, which led to this film becoming the black sheep of the trilogy.

The fourth film of the Transformers franchise may have had a flashy new lead in Mark Wahlberg, the addition of the Dinobots and a worldwide gross of more than a billion dollars at the box office, Age of Extinction had neither the cool factor of its predecessors nor the camp factor of its sequel, leading to its status as the most mediocre of the Transformers movies.

Finding Dory may have been the third most successful film of 2016 with a box office total of $1.028 billion, but even the later direct-to-streaming Pixar films seem to be more celebrated and discussed among Disney die-hards, which is even more baffling considering how revered Finding Nemo remains within the House of Mouse to this day.

With Kristen Stewart carrying the shine of the Twilight franchise and Chris Hemsworth skyrocketing to fame with Thor, this epic reimagining of the Snow White mythos struck a chord with audiences in 2011 and amassed nearly $400 million at the box office, but the film has slowly faded into “who cares?” territory over the past decade, especially after the underwhelming response to the Stewart-less sequel left few inspired to rediscover it.