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Poster for The Sugarland Express
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Released
1974 · FILM

The Sugarland Express

A desperate mother teams with her escaped husband to hijack a highway patrolman and race across Texas, determined to snatch their infant from state custody before he's lost forever, all while evading a relentless manhunt that turns them into unlikely folk heroes.

“A girl with a great following. Every cop in the state was after her. Everybody else was behind her.”

Directed by
Steven Spielberg
Written by
Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins
Runtime
110 min
CrimeDrama
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

Married small-time criminals Lou-Jean and Clovis Poplin lose their infant child to the state of Texas and decide to go to any lengths necessary to reclaim him. Lou-Jean helps Clovis escape from jail, and together they steal their son from his foster home, along with taking a highway patrolman hostage. As a large-scale manhunt begins across Texas, the couple unexpectedly emerge as folk heroes and develop a bond with their captive.

Credits

Actors
Editor
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 Edward M AbromsShot by Vilmos ZsigmondScored by John Williams

Box Office

1974 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 4.3× 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

$12.8M

Budget$3.0M
Worldwide gross$12.8M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Sugarland Expressde
  • Sugarland Expressfr

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