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Poster for The Rookie
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Released
2002 · FILM

The Rookie

A down‑on‑his‑luck high school teacher and baseball coach bets his future on leading the worst team in Texas to a district title, only to face skeptical scouts who doubt a 35‑year‑old rookie’s chance at the majors.

“Sometimes dreams come back to life.”

Directed by
John Lee Hancock
Written by
Mike Rich
Rated
MPA · G
Runtime
127 min
DramaFamilySport
Streaming on
  • Disney+

Synopsis

Jim Morris never advanced beyond the minor leagues before a shoulder injury ended his pitching career twelve years ago. Now a married high-school chemistry teacher and baseball coach in Texas with children, Jim's team makes a deal with him: if they win the district championship, Jim will try out with a major-league organization. The bet proves to be enough incentive for the team, and they go from worst to first, reaching the state championship for the first time in the school's history. Jim, compelled to honor his end of the deal, is nearly laughed off the try-out field—until he takes the mound and confounds the scouts (and himself) by throwing successive 98 mph fastballs, a performance good enough to earn him a minor-league contract with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Jim still has a long way to go before reaching the major leagues, but with his big-league dreams revived, there's no telling where he could end up.

Credits

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Editor
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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 Eric L BeasonShot by John SchwartzmanScored by Carter BurwellDesigned by Barry Robison

Box Office

2002 · Box office

✅ Made its money back — grossed 3.8× 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

$75.6M

Budget$20.0M
Worldwide gross$75.6M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $16.0M — 21% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $23.2M — 31% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 2,511 theaters

Also known as

  • Die Entscheidung - Eine wahre Geschichtede
  • El Novatoes
  • Rêve de championfr
  • Un sogno, una vittoriait

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