The Manhattan Project
“Paul Stevens' high school science project has gotten a little out of hand. He just built an atomic bomb. Now he's got 11 hours to make sure it doesn't work.”
Synopsis
A gifted high school student steals plutonium from a secret nuclear weapons facility in his hometown with the goal of building his own nuclear bomb. His intention is to win a national science fair and expose the government.
Credits
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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 Nina FeinbergShot by Billy WilliamsScored by Philippe SardeDesigned by Philip Rosenberg
Box Office
1986 · Box office
📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.2× 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
$3.9M
Opening weekend: $1.5M — 39% of its US run. Front-loaded — most of its money arrived opening weekend.
Opening week (7-day): $2.3M — 58% of its US & Canada run.
Peak 827 theaters
Also known as
- Manhattan Project - Der atomare Alptraumde
- Juguete mortales
- Le Projet Manhattanfr
- Gioco mortale - Manhattan Projectit
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Cast & Crew
19 unique people credited
Top billed cast
John Lithgow
as John Mathewson
Christopher Collet
as Paul Stephens
Richard Council
as Government Aide
Robert Schenkkan
as Government Aide
Paul Austin
as General
Adrian Sparks
as Scientist
Curt Dempster
as Scientist
Bran Ferren
as Lab Assistant
Jill Eikenberry
as Elizabeth Stephens
Cynthia Nixon
as Jenny Anderman
Ned Schmidtke
as as Jenny's Parent
Directors
1Writers
2Producers
2Other crew
5Parents Guide
AI Personalities
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