Credit: Paramount PicturesTom Cruise’s latest movie just got hit hard at the box office, and it looks like it’s one for the records.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the seventh installment in Tom Cruise’s long-running spy thriller franchise, has had a historically bad second-week drop at the box office. While director Christopher McQuarrie’s new film opened to strong numbers, it also catastrophically dropped after its opening weekend, which is not a great sign for the movie’s longevity.
Per The Direct, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One dropped a staggering 64% in sales from its opening weekend, a series-worst performance. While Tom Cruise has been a reliable box office draw since the 1980s, this seems like a sign that the Mission Impossible franchise might not have the appeal it once did.
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It is also likely that Dead Reckoning simply cannot stand up to the twin box office juggernaut that is the Christopher Nolan film Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, both of which are quickly becoming generational success stories. While both movies could not be more different in terms of marketing and general tone, Oppenheimer and Barbie are dominating ticket sales globally and have knocked Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible out of the running for the summer’s biggest movie.
It is not a hopeful sign for the Mission Impossible franchise that Tom Cruise lost momentum so quickly at the box office, especially considering that the announced sequel Dead Reckoning Part Two is already scheduled to be in theaters next year.
On the other hand, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is receiving the highest critical praise of any entry in the franchise to date, so it’s not as though all is completely lost. However, given that the Tom Cruise movie came with a whopping $291 million production budget, critical praise won’t save the franchise if it can’t bring the numbers it used to.
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If Tom Cruise wants to keep his spy franchise going, Dead Reckoning Part Two will have an overwhelming box office performance more on the level of the billion-grossing Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and less like Part One. Otherwise, we might be seeing the last of Ethan Hunt in the field.
Has the Mission Impossible franchise run out of steam? Let us know in the comments below!