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Poster for The World According to Garp
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Released
1982 · FILM

The World According to Garp

A struggling writer fights to finish his novel while his unfaithful wife’s betrayals and his mother’s militant feminism threaten to upend his life and career.

“Robin Williams is Garp. He's got a funny way of looking at life.”

Directed by
George Roy Hill
Written by
John Irving, Steve Tesich
Runtime
136 min
ComedyDrama
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

A struggling young writer finds his life and work increasingly shaped by his unfaithful wife and his radical feminist mother, whose best-selling manifesto propels her to cultural icon status.

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: 18

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 Stephen A RotterShot by Miroslav OndricekDesigned by Henry Bumstead

Box Office

1982 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.7× 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

$29.7M

Budget$17.0M
Worldwide gross$29.7M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $2.9M — 10% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $4.8M — 16% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 357 theaters

Also known as

  • Garp und wie er die Welt sahde
  • Le Monde selon Garpfr
  • Il mondo secondo Garpit

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