It’s one of the greatest classics of American comedy, but now we know its success came exclusively thanks to DVD sales.

A comedy with Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks? It sounds like a guaranteed hit now, sure, but in 2001 it was little more than a pipe dream, an attempt to recreate the sex comedies of the 80s from a modern point of view that, just as its director, David Wain, expected, wasn’t going to interest anyone. He wasn’t far off: Wet Hot American Summer took in less than $300,000 and slipped into obscurity… until it came out on DVD.

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Wet Hot American Summer on DVD

As its director recalls on the film’s 25th anniversary, “When we were shooting it I used to say, ‘I hope we finish it and if we do it plays in some theater so the New York Times can review it. Then we’ll have won. And that happened’”. Of course, that doesn’t mean the movie became an immediate triumph, far from it.

In fact, quite the opposite: “It opened in two theaters, we got one review and I said, ‘Okay, that’s it, we’re done’. And that was all. Still, the DVD came out a year later and people started to discover it and started to talk about it and to pass it around. And over the decades it became a legendary project”. That’s not just a figure of speech: besides being a terrific comedy and a fantastic example of nostalgia done right, Wet Hot American Summer eventually became a franchise.

Netflix released two different series based on the movie (a hilarious prequel and a not-so-hilarious sequel), and on top of that there was a feature-length making-of, a role-playing game, and even a graphic novel. And although all its stars are now hugely famous, a second film set 25 years later can’t be ruled out. We’ve seen stranger things (and with less talent).