Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One Fights The Friction With $80 Million Five-Day Opening

Update 2023/07/16: With Saturday's numbers in, "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One" is now looking at an $80 million five-day opening, including $56.2 million in ticket sales from Friday to Sunday. Original article follows.

Next week's dual opening of Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" may already be the box office story of the summer, but don't count out Ethan Hunt. "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One," the seventh film in the franchise begun by Brian De Palma but now anchored by acteur Tom Cruise, jumped out of a helicopter and into theaters this Wednesday, and the box office reality is finally ready to be compared with box office projections.

THR is reporting a $78 million five-day opening across North America, with the global tally hovering around $240 million. Paramount made the unusual yet wise choice to open the film on Wednesday rather than the traditional Friday blockbuster slot to allow "Dead Reckoning Part One" more time in theaters before Barbenheimer scorches everything in sight. $78 million does seem low given the film's $290 million budget (COVID delays are to thank for this massively ballooned number), but there are a few reasons Cruise, director Christopher McQuarrie, and co. shouldn't worry.

For one, the audience for a "Mission: Impossible" film (older, bang-bang-shoot-em-up inclined) may be distinct enough from the audiences for "Barbie" (women, possibly children [?], people who enjoy fun) and "Oppenheimer" (cinephiles, history dads, those who want to feel haunted and anxious) that all three can peacefully co-exist at next week's box office. That would give "Dead Reckoning Part One" a better shot at the strong second weekend it needs to grow the legs for a full budget recoup. Another reason to be hopeful is the precedent set by the "Mission: Impossible" franchise and by Cruise's last film, "Top Gun: Maverick." Historically, Missions Impossible stay lucrative at the box office for weeks and do extremely well internationally. And Cruise's insistence that "Maverick" stay in theaters made it the highest-grossing film of 2022.

If current projections hold, "Dead Reckoning Part I" will become the second-highest-grossing film in "Mission: Impossible" history. It falls behind "Mission: Impossible 2" by a short margin; the sequel raised $78.5 million in its five-day opening in 2000. After 31 weeks in theaters, that film grossed $546 million at the global box office, exactly 7x its opening. The sixth film in the franchise, "Fallout," did even better, grossing $792 million worldwide over a $61 million opening — nearly doubling the sequel's record at 13x times the opening/total gross. If "Dead Reckoning Part One" follows in the footsteps of "Fallout," it could very well become the highest-grossing film in the franchise's history.

Elsewhere at the box office this week, the independent Mormon distributor Angel Studios continues to stage a surprise victory with "Sound of Freedom," a politically spiky thriller about child sex trafficking that took this week's #2 spot at the box office. Originally slated for distribution by 20th Century Fox, "Sound of Freedom" has succeeded with far fewer resources due to a strange cocktail of word-of-mouth buzz, its under-served demographic of conservative Christians, and widely-shared (and debunked) conspiracies on social media that theaters are attempting to interfere with screenings.

Pixar's "Elemental," which had a shabby opening of $29 million, continues to hold strong in the top 5 in its fifth week of release, recently passing "Encanto" in total box office gross. Patrick Wilson's directorial debut, "Insidious: The Red Door" has fallen to #3, but with a $59 million ten-day gross over a $16 million budget, the fifth film in James Wan's "Insidious" franchise can handily be called a success. "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" continues to be this summer's biggest loser, still falling short of its enormous $300 million budget in its third week of release.