Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for Flight of the Phoenix
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
2004 · FILM

Flight of the Phoenix

When a cargo plane crashes in the Gobi Desert, a determined captain and his passengers must rebuild the wreckage into a flyable aircraft before ruthless smugglers close in.

“Out of the ashes, hope will rise.”

Directed by
John Moore
Written by
Lukas Heller, Scott Frank
Rated
MPA · PG-13
Runtime
113 min
ActionAdventureDrama
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

When an oil rig in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia proves unproductive, an aircraft crew is sent to shut down the operation and transport the workers out. On the flight out over the desert en route to Beijing, Capt. Frank Towns and co-pilot A.J. struggle to keep their cargo plane, a C-119 Flying Boxcar, airborne when a violent sandstorm hits. Forced to crash-land in a remote, uncharted part of the desert, the two pilots and their passengers—a crew of oil workers and a drifter—must work together to survive by rebuilding the aircraft. Soon, dwindling supplies and the threat of a band of merciless smugglers add greater urgency to their efforts.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 34

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 Don ZimmermanShot by Brendan GalvinScored by Marco BeltramiDesigned by Patrick Lumb

Box Office

2004 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.5× 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

$21.0M

Budget$45.0M
Worldwide gross$21.0M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $5.0M — 24% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $7.8M — 37% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 2,604 theaters

Also known as

  • Der Flug des Phoenixde
  • Der Flug des Phönixde
  • El vuelo del Fénixes
  • Le Vol du Phœnixfr
  • Il volo della feniceit

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).