Before Titanic and Avatar came out, they were considered the most expensive movies ever made at that time. Many assumed that the result would be complete disaster.

If “Titanic” flopped, there would be no end to jokes about how Cameron made a sinking ship.

Today, they are considered the highest-grossing movies ever made.

Not many people know how completely successful a film is until the box office results show, but there are bound to be many people involved with the production who inaccurately predict that the movie they made would be forgotten.

Here are a few examples:

It Happened One Night (1934)

Prior to 1934, Columbia Pictures was a rather small studio that made B-movies. So when a big movie honcho wants to punish his big contract star of the moment, they loaned them to a B-movie studio.

Thus is how Louis B. Mayer loaned his superstar Clark Gable to teach him a lesson when he wanted a raise, to make the film that put Columbia on the map and launched director Frank Capra’s career. Even his co-star Claudette Colbert had no idea it would be that successful; she told a friend that she made the worst film ever. Gable and Colbert were rewarded with Oscars.

Marty (1955)

You may have seen The Producers, and thought how in the world would someone come up with a harebrained scheme?

You may be thinking it’s fiction, but in Hollywood, there was a real Springtime for Hitler, and this scheme was concocted by none other than…Burt Lancaster!

Lancaster and a buddy named Harold Hecht produced movies for United Artists. Practically all of them were hits. Big hits. Ultimately Hecht and Lancaster saw Marty as a perfect tax write-off. A story about two loners falling in love, Lancaster allegedly claimed: “Who wants to see a movie about two ugly people?” A lot of people, apparently.

Besides, without Marty, we would never have seen a whole lot of Ernest Borgnine. Dear lord, who would have been Mermaid Man?

Rocky (1976)

The film about the ultimate underdog was sort of an underdog film itself. And the main reason was because the studio was certain no one would see a film with an unknown actor (as it is with every Hollywood movie).

United Artists was satisfied with Sylvester Stallone’s script, they weren’t too keen on casting him as the lead, because, well…he wasn’t established then. The studio actually considered James Caan, who does look the part, and Ryan O’Neal, who clearly doesn’t.

The producers stood by Stallone’s request to play Rocky Balboa, our hero, but the executives were not aware of what he looked like. So they screened one of his early films, The Lord’s of Flatbush, and he immediately knew that he was perfect.

This is “Sylvester Stallone.” Handsome, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, possibly of northern Italian stock. Ryan O’Neal, eat your heart out!

Then they met Stallone, and they were shocked…SHOCKED! (They learned that their Stallone was actually named Perry King. Ever heard of him? Didn’t think so.) But, the producers were resilient, and they complied.

But, fortunately, United Artists had one film they could bet their money on. It was Scorsese, it had Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli, it was a homage to great 1940s musicals, and was destined to become a classic.

So, they decided to cut Rocky down to $1 million, and decided to have the boxing picture share the box-office grosses with the Scorsese picture so both would break even. It worked, but not in the way the studio expected it.

So, Rocky made a near-destitute actor into a big action star and launched five sequels which caused the franchise to degenerate into utter silliness until the last one. And what about Scorsese’s film New York, New York? No one remembers it outside of the hit title song that was spawned from it.

Star Wars (1977)

Speaking of Scorsese, the 1970s was a decade that launched the rise of the auteur filmmaker. Such decade also launched the careers of Spielberg, Coppola, de Palma, and many others. But the two filmmakers that came out of this era as some of the wealthiest were Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Spielberg started with a shark, Lucas started with a genre that was seen as mere kids’ fodder.

Lucas made a splash with his period piece, American Graffiti, and now had a hard time convincing all the major studios to finance his homage to old-time serials. The only studio that was willing to back it was the debt-ridden 20th Century Fox, and that was because of the faith bestowed on the project by executive Alan Ladd Jr., son of Shane. The higher-ups at the studio didn’t think so; they didn’t put much effort into promoting it, and ended up selling the film as a tax shelter. The film not only saved Fox from the brink, but made science fiction an appealing genre to all ages. It also made Lucas one of the most respected and hated filmmakers in history as Star Wars fans blame him for turning the franchise into a cash-cow.