Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One may be looking at the best box-office opening in the entire franchise. A report from THR pegs the movie as targeting a $90 million box-office opening. This includes the 5-day extended opening weekend, with the traditional 3-day opening weekend looming closer to $65 million. This still makes it the best opening weekend in the franchise, following 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout that opened to $61 million.
Here’s a comparison of the opening weekend of previous Mission: Impossible movies:
| Movie | Opening Weekend | Domestic Box Office | Worldwide Box Office |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mission: Impossible | $45.4 million | $181 million | $457.7 million |
| Mission: Impossible II | $57.8 million | $215.4 million | $546.4 million |
| Mission: Impossible III | $47.7 million | $134 million | $398.5 million |
| Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol | $12.8 million | $209 million | $694.7 million |
| Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation | $55.5 million | $195 million | $682.7 million |
| Mission: Impossible – Fallout | $61.2 million | $220 million | $791.7 million |
Despite the promising opening projection, comparisons to last year’s juggernaut Top Gun: Maverick may be a bit far-fetched. To recap, Maverick opened to $126.7 million in a 3-day opening weekend, nearly double the projections of Dead Reckoning Part One. It also came at a time when the world was just recovering from the pandemic, which was simultaneously an opportunity and a huge risk.
Dead Reckoning has its own challenges to deal with. It arrives in a packed summer season hot on the heels of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. After a week and a half in theaters, it’ll lose all IMAX screens to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, an arrangement that Cruise has vocally voiced his displeasure about. And Greta Gerwig’s Barbie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling releases the same day and is eyeing a much mroe promising opening than Cruise’s latest in the action series.
Regardless, Mission: Impossible has the opportunity of aiming for a marathon instead of a sprint. If it manages to wait it out in the regular screens for 3 weeks, it could regain some of those IMAX screens which could bolster its box-office down the road. Early reactions are certainly enthusiastic and co-stars are all praise about Cruise’s work ethic and his dedication towards getting stunts right. And with the timeliness of Artificial Intelligence, the use of AI as a chief antagonist might not be so boring after all.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is set to release in theaters on July 12, 2023. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the film sees Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby and Henry Czerny reprise their roles from previous films in the series. They are joined by series newcomers Hayley Atwell, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Charles Parnell, Rob Delaney, Indira Varma and Mark Gatiss.
