Mission Impossible 7 box office underperforms against other summer movies

The Tom Cruise fever has returned with Mission Impossible 7. While the film has impressed critics big time, it seems that fans haven’t necessarily reciprocated in the way that Cruise or Paramount would have liked, especially given that the latest Mission Impossible outing reportedly took three years to be developed.

The box office numbers after the first weekend are now out and they are below expectations. The hype and fandom that Tom Cruise regained after Top Gun: Maverick hasn’t translated into Dead Reckoning Part One, as the film is currently performing lower than Mission: Impossible – Fallout, as far as numbers are concerned.

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The Mission Impossible 7 box office collections are lower than what was projected

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (Image via Paramount)

As per Box Office Mojo, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One has made $56 million on its opening weekend at the domestic box office, and brought in $80 million in its first 5 days (since it was released on a Wednesday). The worldwide total currently stands at $235 million.

The initial projections for the domestic total were $90 million and the worldwide total were $250 million. So, the film has fallen short of the estimates. Furthermore, it hasn’t built upon the goodness of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, which secured a domestic opening of $61 million in its first 3 days. It has even fallen short of Mission: Impossible II’s $57 million opening.

M: I franchise (Image via Paramount)

Before Dead Reckoning Part One, the Mission: Impossible franchise managed to bring in almost $3.6 billion from its six movies. The total earnings from each film are listed below:

• Mission: Impossible — $457.7 million
• Mission: Impossible 2 — $546.4 million
• Mission: Impossible III — $398.5 million
• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol — $694.7 million
• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation — $682.7 million
• Mission: Impossible – Fallout — $791.7 million

With the kind of opening that Dead Reckoning has secured, it may not be able to beat Fallout, but could end up very close to Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation’s worldwide totals. It might still pull in a profit, but given that its production budget ballooned up to $291 million, the profitability won’t be very high.

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Why things are worrisome for Mission Impossible 7

2023’s summer movie release roster has been very crowded, as it saw many big-budget franchise movies, including Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Fast X, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, among others. Competing with the blockbusters that launched before Dead Reckoning has surely played a role in its underperformance.

Mission Impossible 7 and Oppenheimer (Image via Universal/Paramount)

But after Dead Reckoning, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Meg 2: The Trench will hit theaters from July 21 onwards. Furthermore, all IMAX and other premium screens that were a big factor in Dead Reckoning’s box office numbers will go to Oppenheimer when it arrives.

So, the second-weekend numbers of Mission Impossible 7 could see a huge drop because of the incoming competition from Oppenheimer and Barbie (which are tracking high pre-ticket sales), and the lack of premium screens. It is possible for M:I 7 to share premium screens with Oppenheimer from July 28 onwards, but it will have to be very careful of the damage that the weekend of July 21 might cause.

The only hope for Mission Impossible 7 is good word of mouth from fans and critics as that is the only way it could recuperate from its underperformance and hold its own against "Barbenheimer."