The Rock's Baywatch reboot may be drowning, not waving, in multiplexes around the globe, but there is one territory where cinemagoers apparently can't get enough of it: Germany. Put it down to the enduring cultural impact of David Hasselhoff, but the country of Angela Merkel is almost single-handedly saving Baywatch from box-office infamy. It's not the first time a movie has struck an unexpected chord somewhere far from home, as these examples demonstrate. An ambitious $160m (£124m) adaptation of an ailing online video game, Warcraft was conceived as the first instalment of a trilogy set in the magical realm of Azeroth, telling a generation-spanning tale of displaced orcs and angry sorcerers. In some countries it even came billed as Warcraft: The Beginning.