At the box office, a movie is a hit or a bomb, or someplace in between.
At the end of the day, the entertainment industry is a business, and that means that the success of films is judged ultimately not by critical acclaim or awards, but by box office success.
However, sometimes films don’t find their real success until much later.
A movie that people didn’t see in theaters is discovered on cable television or home video, and suddenly a movie that nobody saw is now a movie that everybody has seen and loves.