Matilda

Matilda (1978)

America loves a winner!

A small-time talent agent discovers an amazing boxing kangaroo and figures to use it as his stepping-stone into the big time.

Date of release
1978-06-22
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (6)
Runtime
1h 45m
Genres
Comedy, Crime, Family
Director
Daniel Mann

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $5M

Matilda is a 1978 American comedy film directed by Daniel Mann and starring Elliott Gould, Robert Mitchum and Lionel Stander. The screenplay by Timothy Galfas and Albert S. Ruddy is based on the 1970 novel of the same name by Paul Gallico.

Production

The film was budgeted at $5.2 million. Producer Al Ruddy explained that "we debated over using both a real kangaroo and an actor in costume and opted for the latter as cross-cutting proved too jarring for the viewer. However the costume was a $30,000 investment that paid off as it not only allowed freedom of movement, but we were able to program it with transistors to allow us to direct the actor's tiniest gesture." Critic Tom Allen wrote in The…

Gould said "Al Ruddy wanted to buy back my position, my points in the picture, he offered me hundreds of thousands of dollars, which at that point I decided would be bad karma. That was bad judgment on my part.”

Half the budget was provided by Melvin Simon Productions. TV rights were sold to CBS for $2.5 million, foreign sales were $1.6 million and AIP paid an advance of $1.8 million. This added up to $5.9 million meaning Simon made a profit of $450,000.

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