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Released
1979 · FILM

The Black Stallion

Young Alec must forge an unbreakable bond with a wild Arabian stallion after they survive a shipwreck, then race against the world’s champions before their partnership is torn apart by ruthless competition.

“From the moment he first saw the stallion, he knew it would either destroy him, or carry him where no one had ever been before…”

Directed by
Carroll Ballard
Written by
Melissa Mathison, Jeanne Rosenberg
Runtime
118 min
AdventureFamilySport
Streaming on
  • Prime Video

Synopsis

While traveling with his father, young Alec becomes fascinated by a mysterious Arabian stallion that is brought on board and stabled in the ship he is sailing on. When it tragically sinks, both he and the horse survive, only to be stranded on a deserted island. He befriends it, and when finally rescued, both return to his home, where they soon meet Henry Dailey, a once successful trainer. Together, they begin training the horse to race against the fastest ones in the world.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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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 Robert DalvaShot by Caleb DeschanelScored by Carmine Coppola

Box Office

1979 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 14× 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

$37.8M

Budget$2.7M
Worldwide gross$37.8M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Der schwarze Hengstde
  • El corcel negroes
  • L'Étalon noirfr

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