Mission Impossible 7 Admits Defeat as Barbie and Oppenheimer Make $370M Tom Cruise Movie Bend the Box Office Knee
The American-spy movie franchise Mission: Impossible starring Tom Cruise in the role of the lead hero, Ethan Hunt, is one of the biggest action franchises in the world. Having earned $3.9 billion worldwide, it is the 18-highest-grossing movie series of all time.
The seventh and latest installment of the series titled Dead Reckoning Part 1 was released on July 12, 2023, and follows its protagonist Ethan Hunt and his team on his hunt for a rogue AI called The Entity. This is one of the most high-budget movies ever made and also the most expensive movie of the franchise with an estimated budget of $291 million.
Tom Cruise Was Enraged at Christopher Nolan
Earlier in June, it was announced that Tom Cruise‘s Mission: Impossible 7 won’t be able to be screened at the Imax theaters for too long because a long-time proponent of Imax, Christopher Nolan has booked the screens for his biopic about the American physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Christopher Nolan has been shooting his movies on Imax cameras since 2008 when he shot The Dark Knight on those cameras, and Oppenheimer was no exception to this. His reasoning for this is: “The sharpness and the clarity and the depth of the image is unparalleled. The headline, for me, is by shooting on Imax 70mm film, you’re really letting the screen disappear. You’re getting a feeling of 3D without the glasses.”
Reportedly, Tom Cruise was not happy about this news and had “shifted his efforts to securing as many of those non-Imax PLF screens as he can” going as far as to calling around to secure as many non-Imax PLF screens as he could. It was revealed that Cruise was also “complaining loudly to Paramount executives and others about the Imax situation.”
Read More: Mission Impossible 7’s Train Scene Was Originally 1.5 Hours Long in the Original Movie Cut
An exhibitor agreement between Nolan and Universal has resulted in all the Imax theatres in North America getting snatched from any other movie for three weeks since the release of Oppenheimer on July 21, 2023. This has proved to be a major setback for Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 7 box-office collection.
Tom Cruise’s MI7 Faces Huge Competition
Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 7 is facing far more competition at the box-office than expected with the release of Barbie and Oppenheimer, two of the most anticipated movies of this year. While MI7 grossed $56.2 million domestically, Barbie and Oppenheimer earned $155 million and $80.5 million respectively in their opening weekends.
Initially, the two juggernauts Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, both of which have sprawling star cast with actors like Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in the former, and Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh in the latter, were expected to compete each other at the twin release date. However, recent reports suggest that majority of the audience did not choose one over the other, thus, giving both the movies a grand opening weekend.
Read More: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One Soars High With Absolute Global Box Office Domination
Dead Reckoning Part 1 has garnered $370 million so far with an impressive $80 million earned over its five-day launch. But this is not much of a consolation for Tom Cruise as the movie has seen a significant drop in revenue in its second weekend and has become the one with the largest box-office drop in the franchise.
Source: CBR
