Bringing Down the House
A meticulous lawyer seeking romance unwittingly dates an escaped inmate who drags him into a high‑stakes fight for her freedom, threatening to upend his pristine middle‑class world.
“Everything he needed to know about life, she learned in prison.”
Synopsis
Peter Sanderson, a tightly wound lawyer recently divorced, is eager to reenter the dating scene but struggles to find the right match. He turns to online dating and is encouraged when he begins chatting with another lawyer. They arrange to meet in person, but Peter is startled to discover that the woman who shows up is Charlene, an escaped African-American convict. Shocked by the unexpected encounter, Peter is reluctant, but Charlene pleads with him to take on her case and prove her innocence. As she becomes more deeply involved in his life, she disrupts his orderly, middle-class existence, forcing him to confront his rigidity and learn to relax.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 20
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 Gerald B GreenbergShot by Julio MacatScored by Lalo SchifrinDesigned by Linda Descenna
Box Office
2003 · Box office
💰 Box-office hit — grossed 6.6× 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
$132.7M
Opening weekend: $31.1M — 23% of its US run.
Opening week (7-day): $39.2M — 30% of its US & Canada run.
Peak 2,801 theaters
Also known as
- Haus über Kopfde
- Haus über Kopf - Betreten auf eigene Gefahrde
- Se montó la gordaes
- Bronx à Bel Airfr
- Un ciclone in casait
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Cast & Crew
20 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Steve Martin
as Peter Sanderson
Queen Latifah
as Charlene Morton
Steve Martin Nm0000188
as Peter Sanderson
Eugene Levy
as Howie Rottman
Joan Plowright
as Mrs. Arness
Jean Smart
as Kate
Kimberly J Brown
as Sarah Sanderson
Angus T Jones
as Georgey Sanderson
Missi Pyle
as Ashley
Michael Rosenbaum
as Todd Gendler
Betty White
as Mrs. Kline
Directors
1Writers
1Producers
2Other crew
5Parents Guide
AI Personalities
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