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Poster for Little Man Tate
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Released
1991 · FILM

Little Man Tate

A devoted single mother fights to nurture her genius son's extraordinary mind while shielding him from a world that seeks to exploit his brilliance.

“It's not what he knows. It's what he understands.”

Directed by
Jodie Foster
Written by
Scott Frank
Runtime
99 min
Drama

Synopsis

Dede is a single mother raising her son Fred. After it is revealed that Fred is a prodigy, she is committed to providing him with the opportunities he needs and ensuring he is not exploited by those who overlook the fact that his extraordinary intelligence resides in the body and mind of a child.

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 Lynzee KlingmanShot by Mike SouthonScored by Mark IshamDesigned by Jon Hutman

Box Office

1991 · Box office

✅ Made its money back — grossed 2.5× 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

$25.0M

Budget$10.0M
Worldwide gross$25.0M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $376K — 2% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $376K — 2% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 7 theaters

Also known as

  • Das Wunderkind Tatede
  • Le Petit Hommefr
  • Il mio piccolo genioit

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