Poster © Paramount Vantage. Shown at reduced size for review and commentary.
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GenreAdventure, Biography & Drama
RatedR
Runtime2 hr 28 mins
ReleasedSeptember 21, 2007
StreamingSee Where to Watch
DirectorSean Penn
StarringEmile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt
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Into the Wild (2007)
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| TTMDB | +Add to Top 8 |
| Into the Wild's Details | |
| Genre | Adventure, Biography & Drama |
| Rated | R |
| Released | 09/21/2007 |
| Streaming | See Where to Watch on this page. |
| Running Time | 2 hr 28 mins |
| Budget | $20M (reported) |
| Box Office | Updated daily from Box Office Mojo. See the numbers below. |
| Based On | Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Into the Wild's Interests | |
| General | Hitchhiking, freight trains, kayaks, Jack London and Thoreau paperbacks, an old bus in the Alaskan wilderness. |
| Music | Michael Brook and Kaki King, plus original songs by Eddie Vedder that basically are the movie. |
| Movies | Wild (2014). Another true story, another long walk to figure it all out. |
| Television | Alone. Real people, real wilderness, a lot of self-filmed soul searching. |
| Heroes | Carine McCandless. The sister who narrates, and who never stopped caring. |
| Into the Wild's Crew | |
| Director | Sean Penn |
| Writers | Sean Penn |
| Producers | Sean Penn, Art Linson, Bill Pohlad |
| Cinematography | Eric Gautier |
| Music | Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Vedder |
| Edited By | Jay Cassidy |
| Production | Paramount Vantage, River Road Entertainment, Square One C.I.H., Linson Film |
| Distributed By | Paramount Vantage |
Into the Wild asks you to love a young man who keeps making choices that frighten everyone who loves him, and mostly it gets you there. The honest problem is that Sean Penn loves Chris McCandless a little too much. The movie leans hard into the poetry of the open road, goes easy on how unprepared he was, and at 148 minutes it wanders the way he did, sometimes beautifully, sometimes just slowly. Emile Hirsch gives it everything, and you watch him get rougher and quieter the farther he goes. The people he meets are the heart of it. Catherine Keener’s road-weary hippie and Hal Holbrook’s lonely widower give the film its warmest and saddest scenes, and Eddie Vedder’s songs sit right on top of the landscapes. It made $56.7 million worldwide on a reported $20 million budget. An 8.0 because the kindness of strangers stays with you longer than the scenery does. $732 says you pull up a map of Alaska tonight just to see how far he really went.
What works: Emile Hirsch’s committed performance, the strangers Chris meets along the way, and Eddie Vedder’s songs over wide-open country.
What doesn’t: The film romanticizes Chris’s choices and glosses over the risks he took, and its long runtime makes the middle wander.
Who it’s for: Anyone who has dreamed of dropping everything and leaving, and anyone who needs a reminder to call home.
Spoilers
Chris ends up alone in an abandoned bus in Alaska, cut off by a river swollen with snowmelt. Weak from hunger and sick after eating a plant he misidentified, he dies there, having written that happiness only counts when it’s shared.
In 1990, Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) graduates from Emory University with great grades, a bright future and zero interest in any of it. He gives his savings to charity, leaves without telling his parents (Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt), and hits the road under a new name: Alexander Supertramp. His goal is Alaska. Along the way he collects a strange little family of drifters and kind strangers, like hippie couple Jan (Catherine Keener) and Rainey (Brian H. Dierker) and a South Dakota grain boss named Wayne (Vince Vaughn). Sean Penn directs, adapting Jon Krakauer's book. One hundred forty-eight minutes, a lot of open road.
Anyone heading north with room for a hitchhiker. He'll bring the books.
| Emile Hirsch | Chris McCandless a.k.a. Alexander Supertramp |
| Marcia Gay Harden | Billie McCandless |
| William Hurt | Walt McCandless |
| Jena Malone | Carine McCandless |
| Catherine Keener | Jan Burres |
| Brian H. Dierker | Rainey |
| Hal Holbrook | Ron Franz |
| Kristen Stewart | Tracy Tatro |
| Vince Vaughn | Wayne Westerberg |
| Zach Galifianakis | Kevin |
| Thure Lindhardt | Mads |
| Signe Egholm Olsen | Sonja |
| Merritt Wever | Lori |
| Jim Gallien | Himself |
| Leonard Knight | Himself |
| R. D. Call | Bull |
| Cheryl Harrington | social worker |
| Bart the Bear 2 | The Bear |
- (cur | prev) 14:30, 17 October 2026 DataBot +400 Numbers refreshed: Worldwide box office $56.7M; Domestic box office $18.4M; Opening weekend $212K; Profit / loss (est.) -$1.7M; Rotten Tomatoes 83%; box office chart updated; RT 83% (200 reviews); Metacritic 73 / 100; IMDb users 8.0 / 10 (700,718 votes); movie.guru score 8.7.
- (cur | prev) 12:00, 17 October 2026 DataBot +2,000 Profile created from Wikipedia and Box Office Mojo: cast, crew, release dates, budget, official trailer.