Studios will sometimes take a risk and produce a movie that seems very unlikely to succeed. These scripts makes their way to the right person at the right time, and that person is willing to roll the dice and green-light the production. This can be either a huge success for a studio or an expensive disaster. Because there are no guarantees either way, a movie that fits a pattern is more likely to be made than one that shows up out of left field. But when a studio opts to take a chance on a small film like Sideways or a niche movie like Shakespeare in Love, it can sometime pay off with a surprising blockbuster.

In 1975, 20th Century Fox released a feature-film version of a rock musical that began as an experimental theatrical production on a small London stage. The Rocky Horror Picture Show flopped. But on April 1, 1976, a Fox advertising executive named Tim Deegan convinced the Waverly Theater in Greenwich Village, New York, to begin showing the film at midnight on weekends. As a result of Deegan's tenacity, a huge cult following has grown up around the rebirth of Rocky Horror. The film that flopped has grossed $113 million to date in the United States alone.