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Poster for Paris Is Burning
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Released
1991 · FILM

Paris Is Burning

Synopsis

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 25

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.

Box Office

1991 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 7.8× 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

$3.9M

Budget$500K
Worldwide gross$3.9M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $3.8M 97% of worldwide · International: $126K (3%)

Opening weekend: $310K 8% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $496K13% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 23 theaters

Re-release box office

20196 theaters
$191K($246K today)

Domestic gross earned in theatrical re-release, by year · adjusted for inflation

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