When it comes to making movies, actors are
just one small piece of a huge puzzle. Between the writing, the directing, the editing,
and the marketing, there are so many things that can go wrong that it's no wonder stars
occasionally think their own movies are going to be total bombs. Sometimes they're right, but other times,
stars have been shocked when their films actually became huge hits instead. Here's a look at some insanely successful
films that even their stars didn't believe in. The Terminator When Arnold Schwarzenegger was offered the
title role in the 1984 sci-fi classic The Terminator, his agent told him it would be
the end of his career. But Schwarzenegger disagreed, not because
he thought the movie was going to be good, but because he figured the film was so "low
profile" it wouldn't even register as a blip on his career when it failed. Schwarzenegger remained just as negative as
he was gearing up to film the movie, telling a friend who inquired about a strange pair
of boots in his trailer on the set of Conan the Destroyer that they were from "some s---y
movie I'm doing." Of course, the boots were part of his costume
for The Terminator, you know, the film that made him a household name. The Full Monty If you've never seen The Full Monty, just
imagine Magic Mike, only filmed in a bleak English city in the '90s, and instead of shredded
American actors, starred a bunch of English guys with dad bods. The film was a box office smash, earned four
Oscar nominations, and is consistently ranked as one of the greatest British films ever
made. Also, lead actor Robert Carlyle hated it. Why? Well, in an interview with talk show host
Graham Norton, Carlyle explained that the shoot was extremely hard, and that the first
cut of the movie was so bad executives planned to send it straight to video. "It was a tough shoot, Full Monty was a tough
shoot." "You really didn't see 'hit' written on Full
Monty?" "Thought it was a load of s---." [Laughter] Luckily, after the director was fired, a new
editor was brought in who totally recut the film, resulting in the classic version fans
know and love. Nice. It With near-universal critical acclaim and hundreds
of millions of dollars made at the box office, It ranks among the most critically and commercially
successful horror movies ever made. And that was a huge relief to star Bill Skarsgård,
who told Variety he was convinced the whole time that the movie was going to fail, saying, "I just felt something really terrible was
going to happen to me personally, or the movie." Not because he thought it was bad, but because
he thought things were going too well, and kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. It never did, though, and the movie became
one of the biggest smash hits of 2017. Pirates of the Caribbean Nobody expected Pirates of the Caribbean:
The Curse of the Black Pearl to succeed. It was a PG-13 Disney pirate adventure based
on a theme park ride, just for starters. Even Disney head honcho Michael Eisner tried
to shut production down when he found out it was going to cost over $100 million. "That probably was the most difficult decision
in my history on committing to a movie." Eisner wasn't alone in his misgivings. During a frank interview with The Guardian
in 2008, Keira Knightley confessed that most of the principal cast were embarrassed to
be working on the movie. "It was really f---ing embarrassing and we
all thought it was going to be total s---." Knightley never told any of her friends she
was working on it, which must have made for some fun conversations after it turned out
to be a massive worldwide hit that spawned a blockbuster franchise. Guardians of the Galaxy Like many in Hollywood, Chris Pratt was pretty
worried that the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie was just too weird to succeed. In fact, both he and director James Gunn admitted
that they were pretty worried that their careers would be over if, as pundits predicted, the
film turned out to be "Marvel's first bomb." Pratt told The Hollywood Reporter, "You don't make a movie with a talking tree. You don't spend this much money on a raccoon
with a gun. For me, I was like, 'Oh, so this movie is
going to bomb. Done. This is the end of my career.'" More than $700 million and a heap of critical
praise later, Pratt was the face of a franchise, and Gunn was one of Hollywood's hottest writer-directors. Pass the ammo, trash pandas! Taken Released when Liam Neeson was in his mid-50s,
Taken somehow managed to take a veteran actor known almost exclusively for his roles in
serious dramas and a single Star Wars movie and establish him as an action star. It turned out to be a surprise box office
success that spawned a film trilogy and TV spinoff, and nobody was more surprised than
Neeson himself. During a visit to The Late Late Show, Neeson
admitted that he figured the film's plot of "a man punches half of Europe to find his
daughter" was too basic to warrant a cinematic release. "I just thought, 'No, it's straight to video.' It's like, it's simple." Neeson reportedly took the role of ex-CIA
agent Bryan Mills because he was sure he'd never get another offer to do an action movie,
considering his age. Nearly a decade later, he's still whooping
bad-guy butt. Animal House According to Hollywood lore, during the production
of Animal House, an executive from Universal approached director John Landis with a simple
ultimatum: find a big-name star they could put on the poster, or the studio would pull
the plug. Luckily for Landis, he just so happened to
be good friends with Donald Sutherland, who said that he'd happily appear in the movie,
for $250,000. The studio said no, so Landis made a counteroffer:
$25,000 for a single day's work and two percent of the film's gross. Sutherland told Landis "I just want the money,"
because he didn't think the movie would succeed. So a revised offer of $35,000 was drawn up. By his own estimation, turning down that initial
two percent offer cost Sutherland $14 million for a single day's work. Whoops! Star Wars Even George Lucas, the mastermind behind the
Star Wars franchise, wasn't so sure the film would be a hit. Shortly before Star Wars hit theaters in 1977,
he visited the set of his friend Steven Spielberg's new movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Lucas was so impressed he became convinced
Close Encounters was going to blow Star Wars away at the box office. Spielberg disagreed, and offered up a deal:
he would give Lucas 2.5% of Close Encounters' box office gross in exchange for a 2.5% stake
in Star Wars. Lucas jumped at the deal - and by some estimates,
Spielberg ended up making nearly $40 million as a result. Now that turned out to be a pretty good bet! Thanks for watching! Click the Looper icon to subscribe to our
YouTube channel. Plus check out all this cool stuff we know
you'll love, too!
