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Poster for Taps
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Released
1981 · FILM

Taps

A determined young cadet leads his fellow trainees in a daring, illegal takeover of their beloved military academy to stop corrupt developers from shutting it down, risking court‑martial and their futures for the institution they love.

“This school is our home, we think it's worth defending.”

Directed by
Runtime
126 min
Drama

Synopsis

When the existence of their military academy is threatened by local condo developers, military cadets take extreme measures to ensure its future.

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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 Maury WinetrobeShot by Owen RoizmanScored by Maurice Jarre

Box Office

1981 · Box office

Made its money back — grossed 2.6× 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

$35.9M

Budget$14.0M
Worldwide gross$35.9M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $35.9M 100% of worldwide · International: $44K (0%)

Opening weekend: $93K 0% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Peak 3 theaters

Also known as

  • Die Kadetten von Bunker Hillde

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