Tom Cruise shakes the world once more as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is set to take the top spot at the worldwide box office.
Per Deadline, the seventh installment of the long-running film franchise based on the popular 1960s television series launched to a 5-day start of $78 million in North America. While that number falls short of the initial $85-$95 million domestic estimate, Dead Reckoning Part One, as of this writing, has amassed a global haul of $122.2 million. Should these numbers climb higher, the film could overtake the worldwide first-week opening of another aging franchise, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Mission: Impossible’s Blaze of Glory
Despite the surprising domestic number, Dead Reckoning Part One has already surpassed the franchise high of the previous entry, 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout, which made $61 million on its opening weekend. That film’s popularity gave it legs to climb as high as $791 million worldwide. All that stands in the way of Dead Reckoning Part One breaking further franchise records is next weekend’s crowded field, which includes Margot Robbie’s Barbie and director Christopher Nolan’s latest epic, Oppenheimer. The latter film will claim most IMAX screens for a three-week hold, which reportedly left Cruise upset.
While it appears Dead Reckoning Part One will struggle to reach the billion-dollar mark globally as Cruise’s previous blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick, there is hope that the latest Mission: Impossible installment will succeed in the coming weeks. The film has the second highest critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes at 96%, one percent lower than Fallout‘s 97% score. Additionally, the Rotten Tomatoes audience score is at 94% while CinemaScore polling came in at a solid A.
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Dead Reckoning Part One sees Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team take on the greatest threat in franchise history: a deadly AI program known as “the Entity.” As Hunt and his team travel the globe in search of two connecting keys that lead to the Entity’s source of power, the noble IMF agent crosses paths with an old enemy from his past in the mysterious Gabrial (Esai Morales). The film sets up a much larger showdown for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two, which has currently paused production due to the simultaneous actors’ and writers’ strike.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is now playing in theaters.
Source: Deadline