‘Dead Reckoning — Part One’ Has Only Made $120 Million Domestically

The fact that “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” has only made $120 million in the last two weeks should be a major cause for concern for Tom Cruise. Hell, even “Sound of Freedom” has made more money ($125 million).

Just to compare, 2018’s “Mission: Impossible —Fallout,” the last installment, made $220 million. The one before that, “Rogue Nation,” finished at around $195 million. We’ll see if ‘Dead Reckoning’ can match one of those.

I don’t know what’s the exact reason for all of these underperforming summer blockbusters at the multiplex, but I certainly wasn’t expecting “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” to be part of that group.

Not even glowing reviews were enough to push ‘Dead Reckoning’ forward, ditto Tom Cruise’s name stamped all over its marketing. It didn’t help that a lot of its screens were swallowed up by Barbenheimer this past weekend.

Cruise was credited in saving the box-office last year with “Top Gun: Maverick” and its $1.5 billion in worldwide ticket sales. This past weekend, amidst ‘Barbenheimer’ fever, ‘Dead Reckoning’ fell 64% from the previous weekend with a second week total of $19.5 million. Even “Sound of Freedom” made more money than ‘Dead Reckoning’.

What Paramount/Cruise are now hoping is that ‘Dead Reckoning’ has some legs — as it stands, its Rotten Tomatoes score is actually higher than either “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer.” The problem is that Cruise’s film keeps failing expectations, it was supposed to open at $90 million on opening weekend and ended up only garnering $78 million.

To make matters worse, a sequel has already started production, before being halted by the strike, with director Christopher McQuarrie confirming that only about 40% of it was shot. The strike delays will inevitably inflate the budget, even as Paramount starts to wonder if the audience for these ‘Mission: Impossible’ films is dwindling.

‘Dead Reckoning’ cost nearly $300 million to make. Its foreign grosses have, however, been better, with a global total of $371 million. It might break even, if it’s lucky.