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Poster for Possession
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Released
2002 · FILM

Possession

An English academic and an American scholar uncover a passionate 19th-century love affair through a series of mysterious letters, embarking on a race across England to solve the mystery before their own relationship is destroyed.

“The past will connect them. The passion will possess them.”

Directed by
Neil Labute
Written by
A S Byatt, David Henry Hwang
Runtime
102 min
DramaMysteryRomance

Synopsis

Maud Bailey is an English academic researching the life and work of poet Christabel La Motte. Roland Michell is an American scholar in London studying Randolph Henry Ash, who is now best known for a collection of poems dedicated to his wife. When Maud and Roland discover a cache of love letters that appear to be from Ash to La Motte, they follow a trail of clues across England, mirroring the journey of the couple over a century earlier.

Credits

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Editor
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Director of Photography
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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 21

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 Claire SimpsonShot by Jean Yves EscoffierScored by Gabriel YaredDesigned by Luciana Arrighi

Box Office

2002 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.4× 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

$10.1M

Budget$25.0M
Worldwide gross$10.1M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $1.6M — 16% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $2.3M — 23% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 270 theaters

Also known as

  • Besessende
  • Possession - Una storia romanticait

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