Paramount Pictures/Warner Bros.
Even Tom Cruise can make mistakes sometimes, as evidenced by the decision to release Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One just nine days before both Barbie and Oppenheimer hit theaters.
According to The Sun — whose reliability and respectability, it should be mentioned, is shaky in the best of times — “insiders” who worked on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One “have been left more than a little peeved” to due the success of Barbie, which blew Dead Reckoning’s box office total out of the water.
A source said: “Tom’s Mission: Impossible seven was hard-earned and overcame so many hurdles to make it into the cinema.”
“But there is a feeling among the crew that they fought hell and high water to get it out only for Barbie to come along and totally overshadow it. It’s a really hard time in Hollywood right now so no one is knocking Barbie’s wins, it’s just left a bit of a sour taste in some mouths.” [via The Sun]
Regardless of the veracity of this report, the fact remains that releasing Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One just a little more than a week prior to the box office monsoon that was “Barbenheimer” (Barbie and Oppenheimer) was a massive misstep on the part of Cruise and Paramount Pictures, who perhaps got a bit too big for their britches following the success of Top Gun: Maverick last summer.
So far, a little more than six weeks after the film’s release, the latest entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise has racked up over $540 million at the global box office. Comparatively, its predecessor, 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout ended its box office run with over $791 million. Similarly, the Cruise-starring 2022 film Top Gun: Maverick, which many say saved the movie theater business, made almost $1.5 billion last year.
Maybe now that he’s realized the potential of her star power, Cruise will attempt to recruit Robbie to become the latest addition to the franchise’s ever-growing roster of beautiful women, which thus far features the likes of Michelle Monaghan, Vanessa Kirby, Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell, and Pom Klementieff.