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Poster for Wings
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Released
1927 · FILM

Wings

Two young pilots, bound by friendship and a shared love for a woman, face the soaring dangers of World War I skies and the plummeting collapse of their bond.

“Youth, hitting the clouds! Laughing at danger! Fighting, loving, dodging death! That's "WINGS"”

Directed by
William A Wellman
Written by
John Monk Saunders, Hope Loring
Color
Black & White
Runtime
144 min
ActionDramaRomance

Synopsis

Two young men, one wealthy and the other from a middle-class background, both fall in love with the same woman and later serve as US Air Corps fighter pilots during World War I, eventually becoming heroic flying aces. As devoted best friends, their shared affection for the woman puts increasing strain on their friendship. Meanwhile, a girl from their hometown becomes involved in their story.

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: 19

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 E Lloyd SheldonShot by Harry Perry

Box Office

1927 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.8× 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

$3.6M

Budget$2.0M
Worldwide gross$3.6M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Flügel aus Stahlde
  • Alases
  • Les Ailesfr
  • Aliit

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