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Released
1985 · FILM

Desperately Seeking Susan

A bored New Jersey housewife obsessed with a free‑spirited newspaper column pursues the mystery woman’s life, only to be mistaken for her and thrust into a wild New York escapade where she must untangle deception and rediscover herself.

“Every man is desperate to have her. One woman is desperate to be her. But someone is desperate to kill her. If they can figure out who she is.”

Directed by
Susan Seidelman
Written by
Leora Barish
Runtime
104 min
ComedyDrama
Streaming on
  • Prime Video

Synopsis

A bored New Jersey suburban housewife becomes fascinated by a free-spirited woman she reads about in the personal columns, leading to her being mistaken for the woman herself and embarking on a chaotic adventure involving amnesia and self-discovery.

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: 23

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 Andrew MondsheinShot by Edward LachmanScored by Thomas NewmanDesigned by Santo Loquasto

Box Office

1985 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 6.1× 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

$27.4M

Budget$4.5M
Worldwide gross$27.4M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $27.4M — 100% of worldwide · International: $1K (0%)

Opening weekend: $1.5M — 6% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $2.4M — 9% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 268 theaters

Also known as

  • Susan... verzweifelt gesuchtde
  • Recherche Susan désespérémentfr
  • Cercasi Susan disperatamenteit

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