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Poster for Burke & Wills
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Released
1985 · FILM

Burke & Wills

They dared to challenge the unknown. They were the first. They crossed the Australian continent from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Directed by
Written by
Runtime
140 min
AdventureDramaHistory

Synopsis

A story based on true events about two explorers on a doomed journey trying to cross Australia on foot in the 19 century.

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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 Tim WellburnShot by Russell BoydScored by Peter SculthorpeDesigned by Ross Major

Box Office

1985 · 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

$1.6M

Budget$9.0M
Worldwide gross$1.6M
break-even (2.5×)

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