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Poster for The Next Best Thing
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Released
2000 · FILM

The Next Best Thing

A straight woman and her gay best friend co-parent a child born from a one-night stand, but when she falls for a new man and wants to start over, their unconventional family faces a heartwrenching custody battle.

“Best friends make the best mistakes”

Directed by
John Schlesinger
Written by
Tom Ropelewski
Runtime
108 min
ComedyDramaRomance

Synopsis

A comedy-drama about best friends—Abbie, a straight woman, and Robert, a gay man—who decide to have a child together. Five years later, Abbie falls in love with a straight man and wants to move away with him and Robert.

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: 22

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 Peter HonessShot by Elliot DavisDesigned by Howard Cummings

Box Office

2000 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 1.0× 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

$24.4M

Budget$25.0M
Worldwide gross$24.4M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $15.0M — 62% of worldwide · International: $9.4M (38%)

Opening weekend: $5.9M — 39% of its US run. Front-loaded — most of its money arrived opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $7.2M — 48% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 2,007 theaters

Also known as

  • Ein Freund zum Verliebende
  • Un couple presque parfaitfr
  • Sai che c'è di nuovo?it

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