The Happening
A high‑school science teacher and his wife must shepherd a terrified teenager across a continent ravaged by a mysterious airborne toxin that drives its victims to suicide, racing against the rapidly spreading panic before they become its next victims.
“We've sensed it. We've seen the signs. Now...it's happening.”
Synopsis
When a deadly airborne virus threatens to wipe out the northeastern United States, teacher Elliot Moore and his wife Alma flee from contaminated cities into the countryside in a fight to discover the truth. Is it terrorism, the accidental release of some toxic military bio weapon—or something even more sinister?
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 35
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 Conrad Buff IvShot by Tak FujimotoScored by James Newton HowardDesigned by Jeannine Oppewall
Box Office
2008 · Box office
✅ Made its money back — grossed 2.7× 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
$163.4M
US & Canada: $64.5M — 39% of worldwide · International: $98.9M (61%)
Opening weekend: $30.5M — 47% of its US run. Front-loaded — most of its money arrived opening weekend.
Opening week (7-day): $40.3M — 62% of its US & Canada run.
Peak 2,986 theaters
Full synopsis
Also known as
- The Happeningde
- Phénomènesfr
- E venne il giornoit
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Cast & Crew
35 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Directors
1Writers
1Producers
3Other crew
22Parents Guide
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Live · bot-verified- Paramount+Stream
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