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Released
1999 · FILM

Message in a Bottle

A grieving shipbuilder receives a heartfelt love letter in a bottle and must confront his painful past when a determined woman tracks him down to deliver its truth, risking both their chances at new happiness.

“A story of love lost and found.”

Directed by
Luis Mandoki
Written by
Nicholas Sparks, Gerald Di Pego
Rated
MPA · PG-13
Runtime
131 min
DramaRomance
Streaming on
  • Prime Video

Synopsis

A woman discovers a romantic letter in a bottle that has washed ashore and sets out to find its author, a widowed shipbuilder whose wife died under tragic circumstances. As a strong and mutual attraction develops between them, the man grapples with coming to terms with his past in order to move forward and find happiness.

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: 22

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 Steven WeisbergShot by Caleb DeschanelScored by Gabriel YaredDesigned by Jeffrey Beecroft

Box Office

1999 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.5× 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

$118.9M

Budget$80.0M
Worldwide gross$118.9M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $52.9M — 44% of worldwide · International: $66.0M (56%)

Opening weekend: $16.8M — 32% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $22.1M — 42% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 2,538 theaters

Also known as

  • Message in a Bottlede
  • Message in a Bottle - Der Beginn einer großen Liebede
  • Une bouteille à la merfr
  • Le parole che non ti ho dettoit

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