How will Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 perform at the box office? In our long-range box office forecast, we are going to take a look at how it’ll take on the domestic and worldwide box office.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1
Can Tom Cruise replicate the box office magic that Top Gun: Maverick created a year ago? Perhaps not to that extreme where it took in $718M Domestically and $1.5B Worldwide – one of the greatest performances in the history of box office. However, the goodwill for that movie shall translate to additional success with the Mission: Impossible franchise as Tom Cruise headlines both films.
The Mission: Impossible franchise is backed by incredible critical success; especially in the 2010s.
Here are the Rotten Tomatoes figures for all the films:
- Mission: Impossible – 66% on 65 reviews
- Mission: Impossible 2 – 56% on 155 reviews
- Mission: Impossible III – 71% on 225 reviews
- Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – 93% on 254 reviews
- Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation – 94% on 327 reviews
- Mission: Impossible – Fallout – 97% on 441 reviews
In what appeared to be a middling franchise, at best, was revitalized with a new direction from 2011 onwards with Ghost Protocol and has continued to get better each outing. Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise have closely collaborated on these films from Rogue Nation and onward through to Part 2 of Dead Reckoning.
Let’s take a look at the historical data for the Mission: Impossible Franchise:
- Mission: Impossible – $45.4M OW, $180.9M DOM & $457M WW
- Mission: Impossible 2 – $57.8M OW, $215.4M DOM & $546.3M WW
- Mission: Impossible III – $47.7M OW, $134M DOM & $398.4M WW
- Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – $29.5M OW (Wide), $209.3M DOM & $694.7M WW
- Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation – $55.5M OW, $195M DOM & $682.7M WW
- Mission: Impossible – Fallout – $61.2M OW, $220.1M DOM & $791M WW
Evidently, the Mission: Impossible franchises continue to leap higher but without significantly moving the needle domestically – the franchise has grown in the international market and in particular, China. Fallout earned a huge $181M in China and with the current state of the Chinese market, this will be a huge hurdle in its overall gross.
When discussing the box office during this intense summer slate, a lot of nuance is required to get complete context and understanding. I’ll digest the advantages and disadvantages for Dead Reckoning – Part 1.
Box Office Advantages:
- As discussed, the Tom Cruise factor is at an all-time high with being the ultimate stuntman in Hollywood today and earning huge praise for Top Gun: Maverick.
- The Mission: Impossible franchise is held in extremely high regard as the last three installments have been commercially and critically successful – especially Fallout.
- Pre-Sales for the film are tracking 8 percent above John Wick: Chapter 4 but 15 percent behind Fast X. In the Fast X case, this is expected due to the frontloaded nature of that franchise but 8 percent above is a welcomed sign.
- Current tracking shows it to be backloaded for a Wednesday release which indicates that a strong 5-day opening could be in play and supports a lengthy run through the backend of summer. The Mission: Impossible franchise usually plays longer and has strong legs at the box office; excluding the third film, it always has above a 3x multiplier from opening weekend.
- The last minute release date change to move to Wednesday gives it an extra 2-day buffer against the big weekend of Oppenheimer and Barbie entering the market.
Box Office Disadvantages:
- Competition is very rough and we are seeing the state of that right now. Can Mission: Impossible pull through the competition it has against it? Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens two weeks before release and Oppenheimer opens the week after it. Both films share the target audience which is adult males; mostly over the age of 26. Also consider Barbie as a threat to take away screens.
- Premium screens have been widely discussed as Tom Cruise is furious that Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 will only be in IMAX screens for 9 days as Oppenheimer as a three-week exclusive rollout in IMAX. That is definitely going to hurt the film – could contribute upwards to a 14% loss from its second week onwards.
- A hefty runtime of 163-minutes will cause exhibitors to struggle fitting it into a lot of showings and alongside Oppenheimer which is 180-minutes, their task of fitting all this in will be tough. I don’t usually buy into the narrative of long runtimes affecting box office performance but in this case, stacked up against competition – it could struggle.
- Again, China has become huge for the Mission: Impossible franchise as Fallout took in $181M from the market in 2018 which is a huge contribution to its $791M worldwide total. The market remains significantly down for Hollywood movies since the pandemic. Only 4 movies have surpassed $150M from 2021 to 2023, compared to 5 Hollywood movies in 2019.
Our Box Office Forecast for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1:
Domestic Box Office:
Opening Weekend: $65 million
5-Day Opening Weekend: $95 million
Total: $260 million
Worldwide Box Office:
Total: $625 million
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