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Released
2019 · FILM

Tolkien

A young J.R.R. Tolkien fights to keep his literary ambitions and cherished friendships alive as World War I looms, threatening to shatter both his personal world and the myths he will someday create.

“A life of love, courage & fellowship.”

Directed by
Dome Karukoski
Written by
David Gleeson, Stephen Beresford
Rated
MPA · PG-13
Runtime
112 min
BiographyDramaRomance

Synopsis

In early 20th-century England, the future writer and philologist John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973), along with three of his schoolmates, formed a close bond through their shared passion for literature and art. This strong friendship deepened as they grew older, but the outbreak of World War I posed a serious threat to its continuity.

Credits

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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 Harri YlonenShot by Lasse Frank JohannessenScored by Thomas NewmanDesigned by Grant Montgomery

Box Office

2019 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.4× 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

$8.7M

Budget$20.0M
Worldwide gross$8.7M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening week (7-day): $3.0M

Peak 1,495 theaters

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