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Poster for Salaam Bombay!
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Released
1988 · FILM

Salaam Bombay!

Directed by
Mira Nair
Written by
Mira Nair, Sooni Taraporevala
Runtime
113 min
Language
HI
CrimeDrama

Synopsis

Young Krishna is left at the Apollo Circus by his mother, who tells him he can return home only after saving ₹500 to replace his brother's destroyed bicycle. As the circus moves on, Krishna is abandoned and makes his way to Bombay, where he begins delivering tea and befriends a heroin addict and a young prostitute. Despite his efforts, earning the ₹500 proves difficult as he struggles with the harsh realities of street life in the city.

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: 18

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 Barry Alexander BrownShot by Sandi SisselScored by L SubramaniamDesigned by Mitch Epstein

Box Office

1988 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 17× 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

$7.4M

Budget$450K
Worldwide gross$7.4M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $2.1M — 28% of worldwide · International: $5.4M (72%)

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