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Released
2001 · FILM

Mean Machine

A disgraced former England football captain must rally a ragtag group of inmates into a winning soccer squad to outsmart corrupt guards and earn his redemption behind bars.

It's Not Just About Football, It's About Pride Inside!

Directed by
Rated
MPA · R
Runtime
99 min
ComedyCrimeDrama

Synopsis

Danny "Mean Machine" Meehan, a disgraced former England football captain, is imprisoned for assaulting two police officers. While in prison, he remains low-key and attempts to move past his troubled past, using the opportunity to influence the lives of fellow inmates. When the prisoners get a chance to outwit the corrupt guards during a prison football match, Meehan steps forward to take charge.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 24

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 Eddie HamiltonShot by Alex BarberScored by Marilyn MansonDesigned by Russell De Rozario

Box Office

2001 · Box office

Made its money back — grossed 2.7× 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

$7.3M

Budget$2.8M
Worldwide gross$7.3M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $93K 1% of worldwide · International: $7.2M (99%)

Also known as

  • Mean Machine - Die Kampfmaschinede
  • Carton rougefr

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