Tom Cruise has been a strong advocate of the theatrical movie experience. His Top Gun: Maverick pulled in $1.4 billion at the global box office at a time when Hollywood was badly beaten and recovering from pandemic woes. Some directors like Steven Spielberg heralded Cruise as the savior of the theatrical experience. And things are certainly looking bright for theaters, with a summer season packed with potential blockbuster movies, just like the good old days. This has created another problem though: the lack of screens to showcase all the huge movies adequately.
Cruise was supposedly miffed at being unable to secure IMAX screens that were locked by Christopher Nolan’s next movie. In a surprising twist though, Cruise shared a post on social media expressing his love for double features while simultaneously encouraging fans to see “rival” movies such as James Mangold’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie in theaters. He is seen posing with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One director Christopher McQuarrie holding tickets for the fifth Indiana Jones movie as he congratulates Harrison Ford on completing 40 years of the franchise.
This is most likely a response to silence the recent reports that emerged about Cruise campaigning and lobbying hard to get some theater owners to budge from their Oppenheimer contracts and allocate screens to Dead Reckoning instead. Ultimately, while it may still be motivated by PR at some level, it’s heartening to see Cruise promote other movies and nudge fans to embrace the experience of watching films in theaters. Also interesting is that Mission: Impossible is neither mentioned in the post text, nor is seen in any of the images accompanying the post.
Let’s see if any of the fellow peers respond. Unfortunately for Cruise and us, Ford, Nolan and Gerwig don’t have social media accounts, ruling out a direct response. They can always reciprocate the gesture through their spokespersons though.
Indian Jones and the Dial of Destiny arrives in theaters tomorrow, June 29, 2023. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One hits theaters on July 12, 2023. And both Oppenheimer and Barbie release almost a week later, on July 21, 2023.
