What does "sleeper hit" mean?

Question

on the commercial they called the new movie "the rocker" the sleeper hit of the summer. what does that mean?

Answer 1

A sleeper hit (often simply called a "sleeper") refers to a film, book, album, TV show, or video game that gains unexpected success or recognition!!!.

Answer 2

slow and steady, with a bang-bang end result.

Answer 3

Some sleeper hits achieve unexpected success at the box office immediately upon their initial theatrical release, but this is not typical. Since these films are not expected to do particularly well they are often underpromoted and take time to register in the public consciousness. Typically the sleeper hit relies instead on positive word of mouth and publicity generated by good reviews or awards. Thus sleeper films often attract the most viewers in the latter part of their theatrical releases. For example, There's Something About Mary had a small release, but gained notoriety through word of mouth, and grew to top the weekend box office on its 8th week of release. Studios have become more adept at responding to sleeper success at the box office by gradually increasing the number of screens and amount of advertising devoted to a promising film over several weeks (as opposed to a traditional pre-release advertising blitz). This strategy was used to great success by the promoters of Little Miss Sunshine and Brokeback Mountain.[citation needed] Some sleeper hits fail completely at the box office but succeed later on video as cult films through positive word of mouth reviews communicated between fans in particular social networks or demographics.

A sleeper hit does not necessarily have to make a lot of revenue; it just needs to achieve a high degree of success relative to expectations. However, the term is generally not used to refer to large budget movies, even those that defy their expectations, such as 1997's Titanic. The term is fairly subjective, so many movies are informally referred to as sleepers. Sometimes even an unreleased movie is advertised as a sleeper.

Examples

Rocky (1976)[1]

Star Wars (1977)

Halloween (1978)[2]

Creepshow (1982)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)[3]

A Christmas Story (1983)[4]

The Terminator (1984)

Stand by Me (1986)[4]

Dirty Dancing (1987)[5]

Fatal Attraction (1987)

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)[4]

Ghost (1990)

Boyz N The Hood (1991)

Menace II Society (1993)

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)[6]

Clueless (1995)

Fight Club(1999)

Scream (1996)

Sling Blade (1996)

The Full Monty (1997)[5]

There's Something About Mary (1998)[4]

American Pie (1999)[7]

Office Space (1999)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

The Blair Witch Project (1999)[5]

The Boondock Saints (1999)[5]

Scary Movie (2000)

Legally Blonde (2001)

Rush Hour 2 (2001)

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

28 Days Later (2002)[8]

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)[5] [9]

Bringing Down The House (2003)

Garden State (2004)[10]

Napoleon Dynamite (2004)[10]

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)

March of the Penguins (2005)[11]

The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)[10]

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)[10

Answer 4

It is a movie that wasn't forecast to do well, or just wasn't critiqued at all, but has surprised all critics and done the opposite.