Mission Impossible 7: What Went Wrong With Tom Cruise’s $291M Sequel Despite Saving Hollywood With Top Gun: Maverick?
One of the most anticipated films of the summer was Tom Cruise’s most recent offering, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1, especially after the actor’s previous film, Top Gun: Maverick, which managed to earn over a billion dollars, essentially saved the box office. Despite earning favorable reviews from the public and critics, Mission Impossible 7 was unable to match the financial success of Top Gun: Maverick and only made half as much.
For the sequel to Dead Reckoning, which is currently in a bind, Tom Cruise will return to the role of Ethan Hunt. The film that was supposed to turn Tom Cruise into one of the biggest summer box office successes in 2023 did not succeed. Let’s find out what went wrong.
Is Top Gun: Maverick the reason why Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible 7 tanked at the box office?
Top Gun: Maverick’s success at the box office is widely talked about as how exceptionally well Tom Cruise acted in the movie, making it into a movie that basically saved the box office and when the makers of Mission Impossible 7 thought that the audience would be eager to watch Cruise as Ethan Hunt on-screen. They weren’t quite there yet.
The reports suggested that the movie’s box office fell short after the audience expected more from the franchise in terms of story, acting, and everything, especially after the success of Maverick, in which Cruise was highly applauded for his acting.
One of the reasons that reports stated can be seen as the failure for Mission Impossible is the high production costs of the movie, which came close to $290M after there were repeated delays caused by COVID-19 and prolonged production. It was noted that if the movie’s budget was under or around $200M, the current stats of the movie’s box office earnings, which are around $522M could have been seen as a success, but with a $290M budget, the movie needed to have $580 million worldwide.
Barbenheimer overshadowed Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible 7
Two hotly awaited movies for the summer were Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which, when released, performed exceptionally well at the box office, with Barbie now entering the list of 25 highest-grossing movies of all time.
It has been reported that the anticipation and curiosity about Barbie and Oppenheimer overshadowed Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible 7. When the makers and the actor assumed that his movie could outearn Barbenheimer, it quickly moved to the third spot and people lost their interest in the movie.
The fact that the makers decided to move the release date of Dead Reckoning Part 1 a few days before Barbenheimer, gave the audience a chance to watch the movie but that did not have as much positive effect at the box office as they had expected. Oppenheimer’s IMAX release continued to extend instead of relinquishing some screens of the premium format did not help Cruise’s movie.
Chief analyst at Boxoffice Pro said, “These movies (including Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) would have been a lot more economical if it weren’t for COVID. But even if that meant their budgets were inflated, at the end of the day, these movies cost what they cost and performed how they performed.”
Expectations rise high for Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 2
As it was known that the actor is now focusing on getting the second part of Dead Reckoning released on June 28th, 2024, the ongoing strike has proven to be a challenge for the actor.
It was noted that if Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie managed to finish their movie in time for its scheduled release, then they could open at a great spot for the movie since there had been no major movie announced till now for the release at the time. Since it has been expected that the movie will go on the floor after the strike ends, it is going to give the actors and the cast time to promote the movie at their best.
At the time of Top Gun’s release, Steven Spielberg had said that Tom Cruise saved Hollywood’s a** and he might have saved theatrical distribution, adding that seriously, Maverick’s release saved the entire theatrical industry.
Source: ScreenRant
