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Released
1987 · FILM

The Secret of My Success

A naive Kansas grad lands a lowly mail‑room job at his uncle’s multimillion‑dollar firm and must outwit cutthroat executives while scheming his way up the corporate ladder to achieve the big‑city success he’s always dreamed of.

“There's no such thing as an overnight success. Brantley Foster took two weeks.”

Directed by
Herbert Ross
Written by
Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr
Rated
MPA · PG-13
Runtime
111 min
ComedyRomance

Synopsis

Brantley Foster is a well-educated young man from Kansas who has long dreamed of achieving success in New York. Upon arriving in the city, he quickly discovers that finding work—and romantic opportunities—is more difficult than he anticipated. When Brantley visits his uncle, Howard Prescott, who oversees a multi-million-dollar company, he is offered a position in the company's mail room.

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: 23

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 Paul HirschShot by Carlo Di PalmaScored by David FosterDesigned by Peter S Larkin

Box Office

1987 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 9.2× 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

$111.0M

Budget$12.0M
Worldwide gross$111.0M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $67.0M — 60% of worldwide · International: $44.0M (40%)

Opening weekend: $7.8M — 12% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $11.5M — 17% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,336 theaters

Also known as

  • Das Geheimnis meines Erfolgesde
  • The Secret of My Succe$sen
  • El secreto de mi éxitoes
  • Le Secret de mon succèsfr
  • Il segreto del mio successoit

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