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Poster for The Pest
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Released
1997 · FILM

The Pest

“What kind of freakazoid would let someone hunt him just to collect $50,000?...Next question.”

Directed by
Paul Miller
Written by
David Bar Katz, John Leguizamo
Runtime
82 min
Comedy

Synopsis

Pestario "Pest" Vargas, a fast-talking Latino con artist, finds himself targeted by Scottish mobsters to whom he owes a large debt. Desperate to avoid serious harm, he accepts an unusual proposition: he is taken to a remote island and placed in a deadly game orchestrated by Gustav Shank, a racist German executive. Vargas must survive a full day and night being hunted by Shank. If he succeeds, he will receive $50,000 and be released. The question remains whether his cunning is enough to evade his pursuer.

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: 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 Ross AlbertShot by Roy H WagnerScored by Kevin KinerDesigned by Rodger Maus

Box Office

1997 · 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

$3.6M

Budget$17.0M
Worldwide gross$3.6M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $1.8M — 50% of its US run. Front-loaded — most of its money arrived opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $2.2M — 60% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,205 theaters

Also known as

  • Jagd auf das Chamäleonde
  • The Pest – Jagd auf das Chamäleonde
  • Les Aventures de l'escamoteurfr

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