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Poster for Pete's Dragon
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Released
1977 · FILM

Pete's Dragon

Orphaned boy Pete teams up with his mischievous, invisible dragon Elliott to outwit greedy salesmen and save his magical friend before they’re captured forever.

“Brazzle Dazzle Brilliance!”

Directed by
Don Chaffey
Written by
Malcolm Marmorstein, Seton I Miller
Runtime
128 min
AdventureAnimationComedy
Streaming on
  • Disney+

Synopsis

Pete, a young orphan, flees to a Maine fishing town with his best friend, a lovable, sometimes invisible dragon named Elliott. They are taken in by a kind lighthouse keeper, Nora, and her father. Elliott's mischievous behavior soon lands them in trouble. When unscrupulous salesmen attempt to capture Elliott for their own purposes, Pete must undertake a daring rescue mission.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 20

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 Gordon D BrennerShot by Frank V PhillipsScored by Irwin Kostal

Box Office

1977 · Box office

✅ Made its money back — grossed 3.5× 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

$35.5M

Budget$10.0M
Worldwide gross$35.5M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Elliot, das Schmunzelmonsterde
  • Elliot, das Schmunzelmosterde
  • Peter et Elliott le dragonfr
  • Elliott il drago invisibileit

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