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Released
1988 · FILM

Bird

A young Charlie "Bird" Parker rises to fame as a revolutionary jazz saxophonist in 1940s New York, but his genius is overshadowed by a devastating drug addiction that threatens to destroy his life and relationships.

"There are no second acts in American lives."

Directed by
Written by
Runtime
161 min
BiographyDramaMusic
Streaming on
  • MUBI

Synopsis

Saxophone player Charlie "Bird" Parker arrives in New York in 1940 and is soon recognized for his distinctive and innovative playing style. Despite his musical talent, he develops a drug addiction, though his wife, Chan, makes efforts to support and assist him.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 17

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 Joel CoxShot by Jack N GreenScored by Lennie NiehausDesigned by Edward C Carfagno

Box Office

1988 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.2× 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

$2.0M

Budget$9.0M
Worldwide gross$2.0M
break-even (2.5×)

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