Box Office: 'Mission: Impossible 8' Nabs $25M Friday, Aims For Franchise-Best $63M Fri-Sun Weekend
Inflated budgets and post-'Top Gun: Maverick’ expectations aside, ‘The Final Reckoning’ is opening on par with a 2010s-era Tom Cruise-as-Ethan Hunt sequel.
In a weird repeat of a summer 2002 showdown, Tom Cruise’s latest big-budget action thriller again opened alongside Disney’s Lilo & Stitch. 23 Junes ago, it was the Steven Spielberg-directed Minority Report versus the original animated Lilo & Stitch. Both films qualified ($360 million worldwide on a $102 million budget for the Fox sci-fi flick and $275 million globally on an $80 million budget for the toon) as unmitigated successes. In a stark representation of how moviegoing has changed, Tom Cruise, as perhaps his most definitive marquee character in a well-reviewed and thus-far well-received action sequel, is still getting trounced by a Disney live-action remake featuring one of their bigger post-Lion King marquee characters. Rank aside, how is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning performing thus far?
The Christopher McQuarrie-directed The Final Reckoning, the eighth and potentially last “Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt” Mission: Impossible film, earned $24.5 million on Friday, including $8.3 million in Thursday grosses. With mostly positive reviews (80% fresh with a 6.8/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) and solid consumer buzz (an A- from CinemaScore), Paramount and Skydance are hoping for a Fri-Sun frame at least above the $62 million opening weekend for Mission: Impossible – Fallout and a Fri-Mon gross closer to $80 million than $75 million. Barring a fluke, that should be “mission: reasonably plausible.” While on paper this opening is no better than Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and X-Men: Apocalypse (a $69-$77 million Fri-Mon opening for a $155-$179 million domestic finish), it’s fine for now.
First, inflation aside, it’ll be on par with the $78 million Wed-Sun debut of Dead Reckoning, the $75 million Wed-Mon debut of Mission: Impossible (a record six-day total at the time) back in 1996 and the $76 million 11-day opening (including an IMAX-only $13.5 million opening weekend before the conventional debut in Christmas) in 2011. Second, Cruise’s stardom came from a time when $30 million was a big budget, $15 million was a terrific debut and anything over $200 million worldwide was a pop-the-champagne success. We’d expect longer legs even with smaller openings because his films tended to be reasonably good. The hope is that Final Reckoning will have legs closer to MIB3 ($179 million from a $69 million debut) than X-Men: Apocalypse ($155 million/$77 million).