The Big Year
| The Big Year | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | David Frankel |
| Produced by | Karen Rosenfelt Stuart Cornfeld Curtis Hanson |
| Written by | Howard Franklin |
| Based on |
The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik |
| Starring |
Jack Black Steve Martin Owen Wilson |
| Music by | Theodore Shapiro |
| Cinematography | Lawrence Sher |
| Edited by | Mark Livolsi |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
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Release date
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Running time
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100 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $41 million |
| Box office | $7.4 million |
The Big Year is a 2011 American comedy film directed by David Frankel, written by Howard Franklin and starring Jack Black, Steve Martin, and Owen Wilson. It was based on the nonfiction book The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession which was written by journalist Mark Obmascik. The book followed three men on a quest for a Big Year—a competition among birders to see who can see and identify the greatest number of species of birds in North America (north of Mexico) in a calendar year. The film uses the same premise with fictional characters loosely modeled on the actual personalities.
Filming took place from May to July 2010. The film was released on October 14, 2011, in the United States and was a box office bomb, grossing only $7.4 million against its $41 million budget.
The film follows three seasoned birders who each set out to achieve a Big Year. They are Brad Harris (Jack Black), a 36-year-old computer programmer based in Baltimore; Stu Preissler (Steve Martin), founder and CEO of a New York company bearing his name; and a roofing contractor named Kenny Bostick (Owen Wilson), who holds the current Big Year record of 732 birds.
Bostick is obsessively possessive of his record, but his third wife Jessica (Rosamund Pike) is concerned; this was supposed to be the year they focused on conceiving a child. She also believes that Bostick's birding obsession is what destroyed his previous marriage.
Brad is a skilled birder who can identify nearly any species solely by sound. He hates his job maintaining the operational software of a nuclear power plant in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. Living with his parents after a failed marriage, an aborted career at Dell, and dropping out of grad school, he is a "typical Jack Black underachiever". He hopes that doing a Big Year will give him a sense of purpose and possibly even make his father proud of him.
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