Top 10 Biggest Sleeper Movie Hits of the Decade

By Gregg Kilday, Jay A. Fernandez and Borys Kit

Sleepers come seemingly out of nowhere. They are the little films that confound expectations, attracting enthusiastic audiences that happily spread the word. Sometimes they come from the studio system, produced almost as an afterthought, but mostly they're produced well off the radar. On occasion, they upend the established order by opening at No. 1 at the boxoffice. But more typically they start small, building over time, hanging on in theaters as more heralded movies come and go. Often the filmmakers involved meet with initial rejection before wildly triumphing in the end. In the process, they expose the limitations of Hollywood's conventional thinking about what makes a hit. Sleepers, when everyone wakes up to their potential, tend to be wildly successful, resulting in boxoffice returns that dwarf their modest budgets. So, top sleepers of the past decade, take another bow.

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You never know. That's why it's good to have more to choose from, not just the big marketed flicks.

http://vimeo.com/7093147
http://vimeo.com/7339043

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A sleeper is not a small movie that goes big. A sleeper is a film that gains highly positive feedback critically as well as from regular cinema patrons. You are just naming surprisingly successful films.