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Poster for Bright Lights, Big City
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Released
1988 · FILM

Bright Lights, Big City

“It's 6.00 am. Do you know where you are?”

Directed by
James Bridges
Written by
Jay Mcinerney
Runtime
107 min
Drama

Synopsis

A disillusioned young writer living in New York City turns to drugs and drinking to block out the memories of his dead mother and estranged wife.

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: 21

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 George BerndtShot by Gordon WillisScored by Donald FagenDesigned by Santo Loquasto

Box Office

1988 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.6× 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

$16.1M

Budget$25.0M
Worldwide gross$16.1M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $5.1M — 32% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $6.9M — 43% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,196 theaters

Also known as

  • Die grellen Lichter der Großstadtde
  • Les Feux de la nuitfr
  • Le mille luci di New Yorkit

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