Our story takes place in one year; the real story took place over four years. People who know the story will find a lot of what they call errors. I'm sure I'll be deluged with letters." Nazarian's research, collected over several years, consisted of books, some 350 articles, interviews with the Tucker family, hundreds of photographs, home movies and information from the Tucker Automobile Club of America, whom the production company considered important arbiters of the Tucker mystique. "We knew the facts", she continued, "but to fit the spirit of the story in a film that is exciting and has characters you love and characters you hate – that made us change a lot of things. Things like the president of the Tucker Company was a good guy really, but we needed a villain, so we made him a villain." Alex Tremulis, who served as one of the historical consultants during production, is depicted as the chief car designer of the Tucker Torpedo rather than as the stylist, and the film ignores the involvement of designer Philip Egan. Reception Box office Tucker: The Man and His Dream was released in the United States on August 12, 1988, earning $3,709,562 in its opening weekend in 720 theaters. The film eventually grossed $19.65 million in US totals and was declared a box office bomb because it did not reimburse its $24 million production budget, despite positive reviews. Pocket Books published a novelization written by Robert Tine to coincide with the release of the film. Paramount Home Video released Tucker: The Man and His Dream on DVD in October 2000, which included audio commentary by Coppola, the 1948 promotional film Tucker: The Man and the Car (with optional commentary by Coppola), as well as a making-of featurette, Under the Hood: Making Tucker. Critical reception On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads, "Though it may not be as comprehensive as some would like, Francis Ford Coppola's cheerful biopic of the failed automotive designer features sparkling direction and a strong central performance from Jeff Bridges." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade "A" on an A+ to F scale. Richard Schickel of Time