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Released
1988 · FILM

Drowning by Numbers

“Three Women And A Coroner.”

Directed by
Peter Greenaway
Written by
Peter Greenaway
Runtime
119 min
ComedyDrama

Synopsis

Cissie Colpitts drowns her cheating husband and, in the ensuing cover-up, enlists the help of lonely coroner Henry Madgett, an old friend with a longstanding weakness for her charms. But when Cissie's daughter and granddaughter—both also named Cissie Colpitts—decide to resort to the same methods for solving conflicts with their own frustrating husbands, the women and their repeated appeals for help begin to wear on Madgett's conscience.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

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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 John WilsonShot by Sacha ViernyScored by Michael NymanDesigned by Ben Van Os

Box Office

1988 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.3× 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

$425K

Budget$1.5M
Worldwide gross$425K
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Verschwörung der Frauende
  • Conspiración de mujereses
  • Triple Assassinat dans le Suffolkfr
  • Giochi nell'acquait

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