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Poster for Cool Hand Luke
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Released
1967 · FILM

Cool Hand Luke

A defiant WWII veteran sentenced to a brutal 1950s Florida chain gang must outwit a tyrannical warden and a ruthless inmate leader to survive the camp’s savage hierarchy and claim his own freedom.

“The man... and the motion picture that simply do not conform.”

Directed by
Stuart Rosenberg
Written by
Donn Pearce, Frank Pierson
Rated
MPA · PG
Runtime
127 min
CrimeDrama
Streaming on
  • The Criterion Channel

Synopsis

When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years at a Florida prison farm, he refuses to comply with the rules set by the sadistic warden or the yard's dominant figure, Dragline, who eventually comes to admire Luke's unshakable resolve. Luke's defiant attitude, even during multiple stays in the prison's feared solitary confinement cell, known as "the box," earns him the respect of his fellow inmates and makes him a persistent challenge for the prison staff.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 38

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 Sam O SteenShot by Conrad L HallScored by Lalo Schifrin

Box Office

1967 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 5.1× 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

$16.2M

Budget$3.2M
Worldwide gross$16.2M
break-even (2.5×)

Full synopsis

Also known as

  • Der Unbeugsamede
  • La leyenda del indomablees
  • Luke la main froidefr
  • Nick mano freddait

Community tags

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