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Released
1986 · FILM

Soul Man

“He didn't give up, he got down.”

Directed by
Steve Miner
Written by
Carol Black
Runtime
104 min
ComedyRomance
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

A white prospective graduate student whose wealthy family refuses to fund his law school education decides to take tanning pills to darken his skin in an attempt to qualify for an African-American scholarship at Harvard. He soon finds himself facing unexpected challenges as he begins to experience, firsthand, the realities of being Black in America.

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: 19

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 David FinferShot by Jeffrey JurScored by Tom ScottDesigned by Gregg Fonseca

Box Office

1986 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 7.8× 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

$35.0M

Budget$4.5M
Worldwide gross$35.0M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $27.8M — 79% of worldwide · International: $7.2M (21%)

Opening weekend: $4.4M — 16% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $5.6M — 20% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,282 theaters

Also known as

  • Soul Mande
  • Soulmande

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