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Poster for Primer
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Released
2004 · FILM

Primer

When inventive engineer Abe perfects a garage‑built device that sends objects looping backward through time, he must race to stop the relentless temporal feedback before it traps him—and his world—in an endless cycle of past and present.

“What happens if it actually works?”

Directed by
Shane Carruth
Written by
Shane Carruth
Rated
MPA · PG-13
Runtime
77 min
DramaSci-FiThriller
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

A group of young inventors discovers a sophisticated method to alter reality. Initially, they use it to their advantage by manipulating the stock market, but as time passes, the repercussions of their invention begin to affect them.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
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 Shane Carruth

Box Office

2004 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 78× 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

$545K

Budget$7K
Worldwide gross$545K
break-even (2.5×)

Opening week (7-day): $37K

Peak 4 theaters

Full synopsis

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