Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
1977 · FILM

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

When a French scientist and his American partner uncover a WWII bomber frozen in the Sonoran Desert—and learn a cargo ship has reappeared in the Gobi—they must race against escalating global power outages and terrifying UFO sightings to stop an otherworldly force from reshaping reality.

“We are not alone.”

Directed by
Steven Spielberg
Written by
Steven Spielberg, Hal Barwood
Rated
MPA · PG
Runtime
138 min
DramaSci-Fi
Streaming on
  • The Criterion Channel

Synopsis

Following an encounter with unidentified flying objects, an electricity linesman becomes inexplicably drawn to a remote area in the wilderness, where a significant and dramatic event is about to unfold.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 33

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 Michael KahnShot by Vilmos ZsigmondScored by John WilliamsDesigned by Joe Alves

Box Office

1977 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 15× 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

$306.9M

Budget$20.0M
Worldwide gross$306.9M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $116.4M — 38% of worldwide · International: $190.5M (62%)

Re-release box office

2017901 theaters
$5.2M($7.0M today)

Domestic gross earned in theatrical re-release, by year · adjusted for inflation

Full synopsis

Other versions & cuts

  • Unheimliche Begegnung der dritten ArtDirector's Cut

These are distinct edits of the film. Their own runtime and release year aren’t on file yet — we only have the alternate title so far.

Also known as

  • Die unheimliche Begegnung der 3. Artde
  • Unheimliche Begegnung der dritten Artde
  • Encuentros cercanos del tercer tipoes
  • Encuentros en la tercera fasees
  • Rencontres du troisième typefr
  • Incontri ravvicinati del terzo tipoit

Companies

ProductionJulia Phillips and Michael Phillips Productions, EMI Films

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).