“The idea of a superhero team, which it so brilliantly subverts, wasn’t yet a thing in movies,” Nolan said about Snyder’s 2009 Alan Moore graphic novel adaptation.
A lot of earlier geek fandom movies were released ahead of its time. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World came out in 2010 and didn't find its audience, if it had released 5 years later it would've been a smash hit.
I’d put Spawn in this category as well. While not without its issues I think it captures the spirit of the comic fairly well and is still worth a watch even 20-some years later. I still have no idea how Michael Jai White didn’t become a bigger action star…
The Spawn movie was huge when it was fresh. The demand for McFarlane toys and the industry it spawned speaks for itself. I'd say that without it coming out at the time, comic book movies might not have been made in the 2000's
I think it released at the perfect time as this was the era of 90s action heroes. The problem was they leaned so heavily on bad CGI that it aged super fast.
Dredd's problem was it was marketed as "Dredd 3D" in 2012. Three years after Avatar when every movie had a 3d version and only trash movies like Piranha 3DD were still advertising it in their titles.
From a UK perspective, I think Dredd's biggest problem was lack of marketing. The first trailer only came out a few weeks before the film's release. Also, it was unfairly labelled as a rip-off of The Raid.
TBH I only knew it was on because I walked past a cinema with a poster up. I hadn't heard anything or seen any ads, so went in completely blind on a whim ... the marketing must have been non-existant