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Poster for Defending Your Life
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Released
1991 · FILM

Defending Your Life

A recently deceased advertising executive must convince a celestial tribunal that he faced enough courage in life to earn reincarnation, while battling his own self‑doubt and the pressure of an otherworldly trial that could seal his eternal fate.

“The first true story of what happens after you die.”

Directed by
Albert Brooks
Written by
Albert Brooks
Runtime
111 min
ComedyDramaFantasy
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

When Daniel Miller, a struggling advertising executive, dies unexpectedly, he awakens in Judgment City, a pristine intermediate realm where the recently deceased must demonstrate they lived with enough courage to progress in their cosmic journey. As Daniel, plagued by self-doubt, attempts to justify his life's value, he begins a relationship with Julia, a free-spirited woman who helps him rediscover what it means to feel truly alive.

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 David FinferShot by Allen DaviauScored by Michael GoreDesigned by Ida Random

Box Office

1991 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.8× 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

$16.4M

Budget$20.0M
Worldwide gross$16.4M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $16.4M — 100% of worldwide · International: $468 (0%)

Opening weekend: $93K — 1% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $138K — 1% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 3 theaters

Also known as

  • Rendezvous im Jenseitsde
  • El cielo... próximamentees
  • Rendez-vous au paradisfr
  • Prossima fermata: paradisoit

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