Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 Has A Solid Opening Weekend At The Box Office, But Will Barbie And Oppenheimer Stand In The Way Of Real Success?

[Taylor Swift]

An ok start for the new Mission: Impossible blockbuster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mission: Impossible movies have been consistently successful big screen blockbusters for nearly 30 years now, but that success has never really included huge opening weekend numbers. The best performer in the franchise, Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Fallout, only brought in $61.2 million during its first three days on the big screen in 2018. Acknowledging this, expectations have been tempered for McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, which hit theaters this past Wednesday, and it has met said expectations... but he stakes are different this time, and there is some reason to be concerned.

Check out the full Top 10 for the weekend below, and join me after for analysis.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 Weekend Box Office July 14-16, 2023

TITLE    WEEKEND GROSS    DOMESTIC GROSS    LW    THTRS

1. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1*    $56,200,000    $80,004,000    N/A    4,327
2. Sound Of Freedom    $27,000,000    $85,498,581    3    3,265
3. Insidious: The Red Door    $13,000,000    $58,086,000    1    3,188
4. Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny    $12,000,000    $145,359,865    2    3,865
5. Elemental    $8,700,000    $125,289,287    4    3,235
6. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse    $6,050,000    $368,798,000    5    2,577
7. Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts    $3,420,000    $152,765,000    8    2,041
8. No Hard Feelings    $3,300,000    $46,590,000    7    2,053
9. Joy Ride    $2,575,000    $10,616,997    6    2,820

10. The Little Mermaid    $2,350,000    $293,916,557    9    1,615

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 Opens In Line With Past Mission: Impossible Movies... But It's Budget Provides Reason For Concern

Beyond it being made as the first part of a two-part big screen epic, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 notably differs from its franchise predecessors because of how much money was spent getting it made. These films have never exactly been inexpensive to produce (according to The Numbers, Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible is the only one with a production budget under $120 million), but the latest installment is an outlier in that it cost approximately $112 million more to make than what was previously the most expensive chapter in the series (Mission: Impossible - Fallout, which had a reported budget of $178 million).

That changes the context of the $56.2 million that the movie has made in the last three days. That goes down on paper as the third best opening weekend in the franchise, but it needed to make a lot more money than that to ward off concerns about its big picture box office earnings and legacy.

The performance by Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 warrants comparisons to James Mangold's Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, which also cost nearly $300 million to make (per Deadline) and made a similar amount of money in its first Friday-to-Sunday. From its launch into theaters at the end of last month up until today, Indiana Jones 5 has only just made back its reported costs, with its global box office now sitting at $302.4 million... which is not good and not at all what Disney and Lucasfilm were hoping for releasing the blockbuster in mid-summer.

That situation raises red flags for the latest Mission: Impossible sequel, but there is reason to believe that the new release will ultimately be much more successful. For starters, the movie is already doing vastly better overseas – having made $217 million worldwide so far. There is also quite simply expectation that the film will have much better legs than the Harrison Ford movie as it stays in theaters. While not getting off to great starts domestically, the last three installments of this series have all made over $680 million by the ends of their respective international runs.

Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1

If Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 ends up with a $700 million global box office haul, that should help justify not only the massive investment in the production, but also the massive investment in its direct sequel, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 2, which is presently scheduled to arrive in theaters next summer. Critics provided plenty of buzz for the film pre-release, audiences are clearly digging it (evidenced by the "A" grade from CinemaScore), and it is a film that begs to be seen on the biggest screen possible, which should be a tonic against the segment of the audience we'll call the "Wait-For-VODers."

There are really only one thing standing in the way of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 creating a box office run and justifying its budget: serious competition. Rather than Hollywood giving the film room to have a solid second weekend, Tom Cruise's latest will be in a showdown come Friday with Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (which is notably taking away a lot of Mission: Impossible's large format screens). Both of those titles have crazy hype circling them going into the weekend – many cinephiles already scheduling what have been called Barbenheimer double features – and where that will leave Dead Reckoning Part 1 in the conversation isn't obvious.

Needless to say, there will be quite a lot of particular attention paid to the Top 3 when box office results roll in early next Sunday.

Insidious: The Red Door Takes A Harsh Fall In Its Second Weekend... But It Has Already Made Nearly Eight Times Its Budget Worldwide

As expected, what was good news for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 has translated as bad news for Patrick Wilson's Insidious: The Red Door. In its opening weekend, the horror sequel turned heads by sending Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny to second place, and while doing so it made more than double its $16 million production budget. One week later, the news is more mixed, but simultaneously, the film has been certified as a tremendous box office win.

The bad news for Insidious: The Red Door is that its weekend-to-weekend numbers are harsh. Following its $33 million start, the movie only made $13 million since Friday, which calculates to a rough 61 percent drop. If this were a title that cost Blumhouse Productions $100 million to make, the big picture would look bleak... but that's not the case. Instead, it can be noted that Patrick Wilson's directorial debut has made $122.6 million worldwide so far, and it is now only about $50 million away from surpassing Adam Robitel's Insidious: The Last Key as the biggest hit in the franchise.

Looking ahead, be sure to come back here next Sunday for CinemaBlend's reporting on the Mission: Impossible vs. Oppenheimer vs. Barbie box office showdown, and you can plan out all of your cinema-going plans for the coming months by heading over to our 2023 Movie Release Calendar.