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Poster for The Great Outdoors
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Released
1988 · FILM

The Great Outdoors

Chet Ripley just wants a relaxing lakeside getaway with his family, but when his domineering brother‑in‑law and his clan crash the cabin, a chaotic battle of wills threatens to ruin their vacation forever.

“This is no holiday… this is war!”

Directed by
Howard Deutch
Written by
John Hughes
Rated
MPA · PG
Runtime
91 min
AdventureComedy
Streaming on
  • AMC+

Synopsis

Chet Ripley, an outdoors enthusiast from Chicago, is spending vacation time with his wife, Connie, and their two children, Buck and Ben, at a cabin on a lake in Wisconsin. Their peaceful weekend of fishing is disrupted by the arrival of Connie's overbearing brother-in-law, Roman Craig, along with Roman's wife, Kate, and their two daughters. As the trip progresses, tensions rise between the Ripleys and the rigid, unyielding Craig family.

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: 24

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 Seth FlaumShot by Ric WaiteScored by Thomas NewmanDesigned by John W Corso

Box Office

1988 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.8× 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

$43.5M

Budget$24.0M
Worldwide gross$43.5M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $41.5M — 95% of worldwide · International: $2.0M (5%)

Opening weekend: $6.1M — 15% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $9.7M — 23% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,223 theaters

Also known as

  • Ferien zu Drittde
  • Vacances très mouvementéesfr
  • Non è stata una vacanza... è stata una guerrait

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