‘Mission: Impossible 7’ Is Expected to Blow Up the Box Office – That’s the Good News

Wednesday sees the release of a film with sky-high expectations: Paramount/Skydance’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One,” a film that marks Tom Cruise’s return to the summer box office to defend his title as the season’s champion after the near $1.5 billion global run of “Top Gun: Maverick” last year. But among the similarities surrounding the films’ releases, “Mission Impossible” does have some unique challenges between box office success and turning a profit.

Like “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Mission: Impossible 7” is heading into theaters with a huge load of momentum, as critics have hailed the film as the epitome of the term “summer blockbuster” and have given it a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score, beating even the 96% score of “Maverick.”

In a sign of confidence in the film, Paramount moved its opening day from a Friday to a Wednesday, hoping to build some of that mid-week momentum and audience buzz that “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” enjoyed back in April to boost its Friday-Sunday numbers even further. As it stands, five-day projections stand at around $90 million domestic and $250 million worldwide, both of which would be the highest opening ever for a “Mission: Impossible” film and come with a strong chance of overperformance.

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The thing is, “Dead Reckoning” faces a hurdle that recent films like “The Flash,” “Fast X” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” have struggled to overcome: an immense production budget. Trade reports have put the price tag for “Mission: Impossible 7” at $290 million-$300 million before a globetrotting marketing campaign by Cruise to promote the film that included stops in Rome, London, Seoul and Sydney.

By comparison, 2018’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” had a budget of $178 million. The difference, of course, was the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed on-location shooting of “Dead Reckoning” for five months in 2020. The delay also led to a lawsuit by Paramount against the production’s insurance company that was later settled.

For a franchise sequel to turn a theatrical profit at this budget level, it must perform well across all demographics and all markets. “Fast X,” which got only so-so reception with American audiences and got hit with the same downturn in Chinese box office returns as other Hollywood films, has needed all of its lingering global appeal just to get close to breaking even with $702 million worldwide against a $340 million budget. “Indiana Jones,” with a budget of around $300 million, hasn’t even made that much after two weekends in theaters.

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Paramount saw this sort of underperformance with “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” which has a reported budget of at least $200 million and just crossed $400 million worldwide after a month in theaters, putting it on pace to be the lowest-grossing film in the “Transformers” series.

The studio has chalked this up to the aforementioned plunge in Chinese box office grosses for American films, insiders at Paramount told TheWrap. Execs see the film’s performance in the U.S. ($145 million domestic) and in other overseas markets as signs that there is still interest in the “Transformers” series. Paramount is looking to use that to move the franchise forward in new directions, including the animated origin film “Transformers One” that will likely carry a much lower production cost than its live-action counterparts as Paramount plans to expand its animation slate starting with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” next month.

“Mission: Impossible,” thanks to the popularity of both its past films and its lead star, is not as dependent on China for its overseas performance as “Transformers.” While China contributed $181 million of the $791 million global total of “Fallout” five years ago, Cruise helped push “Top Gun: Maverick” to an overseas total of $776 million without any help from China, where the movie never received permission to screen. Instead, the United Kingdom and Japan each contributed over $100 million while South Korea, Australia and France all reached $60 million-plus.

It’s unlikely that “Dead Reckoning” will reach the global heights of “Top Gun: Maverick” given the competition from “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” this month as well as the fact that “Mission: Impossible,” part of a franchise with seven films over the last 27 years, doesn’t have the novelty of being a legacy sequel that “Maverick” enjoyed being 36 years removed from the first “Top Gun.”

But a global run of $800 million-$1 billion would make this film profitable against its high break-even mark, and would make it the top grossing “Mission: Impossible” film yet. Given the overwhelming critical praise and the renewed interest in Cruise generated by “Maverick,” that should be a mission that Paramount will choose to accept.

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