After a little more than a month in theaters, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One has passed the half-billion mark at the global box office. Dead Reckoning Part One had a soft 29% decline this weekend — its fifth — as it added $4.5 million domestically and $20 million from overseas markets. The film has now grossed a little under $160 million in North America, and another $362 million from overseas territories, for a running global haul of $522 million.
With this, Dead Reckoning Part One is on the verge of overtaking Mission: Impossible 2’s lifetime global haul of $546 million, although by 2023 inlation rates, this figure would be way higher. But there’s little chance of it surpassing, or even matching the performances of the three most recent films in the long-running spy franchise. By comparison, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol made $694 million worldwide in 2011, Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation made $688 million in 2015, and Mission: Impossible — Fallout made a franchise-best $791 million worldwide in 2018.
That being said, none of these movies — including the first Mission: Impossible and Mission: Impossible III, both of which it has already overtaken — cost as much as Dead Reckoning Part One. Mainly due to pandemic-related reasons, the film’s budget ballooned to nearly $300 million, which means that it needs to gross around $600 million worldwide just to break even. The rule of thumb in these matters is that a film this size needs to gross twice its production budget to start turning a profit.
“Barbenheimer” Was the Film’s Undoing
The film’s relative underperformance is especially surprising, considering how unbeatable star Tom Cruise seemed just last year, when he delivered the record-breaking Top Gun: Maverick, which generated nearly $1.5 billion worldwide. Unfortunately for Dead Reckoning Part One, the movie debuted in theaters just 10 days before “Barbenheimer,” leading to a 65% drop in its second weekend from which it never fully recovered. Additionally, the movie lost all its IMAX screens to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. It was recently reported that IMAX tried to persuade Paramount to move the film, but to no avail. It’s clear by now that more than anything else, “Barbenheimer” caused the film’s performance to dip, because the reviews were excellent. In fact, Dead Reckoning Part One is the second-highest rated movie of the series on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
All eyes will now be on next year’s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Two, which could possibly be delayed because it remains unfinished, and likely won’t resume filming anytime soon because of the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. You can watch our interview with director Christopher McQuarrie here, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.