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Poster for Big Top Pee-wee
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Released
1988 · FILM

Big Top Pee-wee

“Hero. Lover. Legend.”

Directed by
Randal Kleiser
Written by
Paul Reubens, George Mcgrath
Runtime
86 min
AdventureComedyRomance

Synopsis

Paul Reubens stars as Pee-wee Herman in his second full-length film, in which a farmer joins the circus after a storm drops a big tent in his front yard. Pee-wee, along with an outlandish cast of animals and circus performers, puts on the best show ever.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 19

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 Jeff GoursonShot by Steven PosterScored by Danny ElfmanDesigned by Stephen Marsh

Box Office

1988 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.8× 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

$15.1M

Budget$20.0M
Worldwide gross$15.1M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $4.6M — 31% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $7.0M — 47% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,256 theaters

Also known as

  • Manege frei für Pee Weede

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