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Poster for Ruthless People
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Released
1986 · FILM

Ruthless People

A bitter husband and his scheming lover kidnap an ex‑boss’s wife for ransom, only to discover the boss intends to murder her himself, sparking a frantic clash of double‑crosses as each side fights to stay alive.

Sam Stone's wife has just been kidnapped... And he doesn't want her back!

Written by
Runtime
94 min
ComedyCrime

Synopsis

Sam Stone harbors intense hatred toward his wife, Barbara, to the extent that he desires her death.

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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 Gib JaffeShot by Jan De BontScored by Michel Colombier

Box Office

1986 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 6.5× 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

$71.6M

Budget$11.0M
Worldwide gross$71.6M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $5.3M 7% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $8.7M12% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,111 theaters

Also known as

  • Die unglaubliche Entführung der verrückten Mrs. Stonede
  • Y a-t-il quelqu'un pour tuer ma femme ?fr
  • Per favore, ammazzatemi mia moglieit

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