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Poster for Prince of Darkness
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Released
1987 · FILM

Prince of Darkness

A skeptical priest teams with quantum physics students to contain an ancient, sentient liquid unearthed beneath a monastery—only to unleash a primordial evil that threatens to consume all of humanity.

“Before man walked the earth...It slept for centuries. It is evil. It is real. It is awakening.”

Directed by
John Carpenter
Written by
John Carpenter
Rated
MPA · R
Runtime
102 min
FantasyHorror
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

A priest finds an ancient canister filled with an unusual liquid inside a deserted church. When a team of graduate students and scientists is assigned to investigate it, they inadvertently awaken a malevolent force that threatens the entire human race.

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: 24

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 Steve MirkovichShot by Gary B KibbeScored by John CarpenterDesigned by Daniel A Lomino

Box Office

1987 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 4.7× 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

$14.2M

Budget$3.0M
Worldwide gross$14.2M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $4.7M — 33% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $6.0M — 43% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,239 theaters

Also known as

  • Die Fürsten der Dunkelheitde
  • John Carpenter's Prince of Darknessen
  • El Príncipe de las Tinieblases
  • Prince des ténèbresfr
  • Il signore del maleit

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