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Released
1996 · FILM

Barb Wire

Barb Wire, a hard‑edged nightclub owner and mercenary in a lawless free zone, must expose and thwart a covert government bioweapon scheme before it turns the city into a death trap—while navigating a dangerous love triangle that could cost her everything.

Don't call me babe!

Directed by
Runtime
98 min
ActionSci-Fi

Synopsis

Barb Wire is a nightclub owner in Steel Harbor, one of the last free zones in the now fascist United States, and also works as a mercenary. When scientist Cora Devonshire enters Barb's club, she becomes entangled in a top-secret government plot involving biological weapons. Barb is soon reunited with Axel Hood, her former lover, who is now married to Cora and serves as a guerrilla fighter, leading to intense action and tension.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 26

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Peter SchinkShot by Rick BotaScored by Michel ColombierDesigned by Jean Philippe Carp

Box Office

1996 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.4× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$3.8M

Budget$9.0M
Worldwide gross$3.8M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $1.8M 49% of its US run. Front-loaded — most of its money arrived opening weekend.

Peak 1,312 theaters

Also known as

  • Barb Wire – Flucht in die Freiheitde

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