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Poster for Colors
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Released
1988 · FILM

Colors

A rookie LAPD officer teams up with a hardened veteran to halt a deadly turf war among rival gangs whose identities are defined by their colors, risking his life and conscience to bring peace to a city on the brink.

“70,000 gang members. One million guns. Two cops.”

Directed by
Dennis Hopper
Written by
Michael Schiffer, Richard Di Lello
Runtime
120 min
CrimeDramaThriller

Synopsis

A young, confident police officer learns the ropes from a seasoned partner in the gang-dominated neighborhoods of Los Angeles, where gang culture is marked by the specific colors worn by its members.

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: 19

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 Robert EstrinShot by Haskell WexlerScored by Herbie HancockDesigned by Ron Foreman

Box Office

1988 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 7.8× 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

$46.6M

Budget$6.0M
Worldwide gross$46.6M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $4.7M — 10% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $6.9M — 15% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 422 theaters

Also known as

  • Colors - Farben der Gewaltde

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