Having done it already last year when Top Gun: Maverick awakened the box office from its summer-long slump, Tom Cruise returns to theaters this week with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One to do it all over again.
A Certified Fresh approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes of a mammoth 98 percent underlines that the first half of the epic globetrotting espionage extravaganza will live up to the hype and expectations, with the seventh installment following on in the footsteps of predecessors Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and Fallout to cement Ethan Hunt as the start of arguably the greatest action franchise there’s ever been.
However, the real proof of its success will come in the amount of money that it makes, and it looks as though Dead Reckoning is set to soar to a new Mission: Impossible high. It was already tracking for a domestic opening of $90 million, but the worldwide projections have the film hauling in at least $250 million worldwide across its first five days in theaters.
For those keeping track of the year’s disappointing big budget duds, it took The Flash four whole weeks to reach that number, with Cruise and the rest of his IMF team set to easily surpass that in the space of a few days. With Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny flagging, too, the return of M:I couldn’t have come at a more fortuitous time, and sets things up nicely for a bumper month given that Barbie and Oppenheimer are waiting in the wings and ready to strike.