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Poster for Heavy Metal
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Released
1981 · FILM

Heavy Metal

A glowing orb of ultimate evil unleashes terrifying tales of dark fantasy, horror, and eroticism on a young girl, dragging her into a nightmarish world where reality and nightmare collide.

A step beyond science fiction.

Rated
MPA · R
Runtime
90 min
AdventureAnimationFantasy

Synopsis

A glowing orb representing ultimate evil terrifies a young girl by telling her bizarre stories filled with dark fantasy, eroticism, and horror.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 28

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 Ian LlandeScored by Elmer BernsteinDesigned by Michael C Gross

Box Office

1981 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.2× 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

$20.1M

Budget$9.3M
Worldwide gross$20.1M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Heavy Metalde
  • Métal hurlantfr

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