As the summer movie season continues, Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt in Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and grabs the #1 spot at the box office with a commendable $56.2 million in its opening weekend.
While it’s an impressive performance, the film fell short of surpassing the largest 3-day opening for the MI franchise, which was set by Mission: Impossible – Fallout back in 2018 with a debut of $61.2 million.
Nonetheless, Dead Reckoning Part One managed to secure the record for the best five-day opening in the MI franchise, raking in $80.0 million since its Wednesday premiere. It surpassed the previous five-day record holder, Mission: Impossible II, which grossed $78.8 million back in 2000.
Critics are raving about Dead Reckoning Part One, as evidenced by an impressive 96% “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while audiences are equally impressed, giving it a 94% audience score. Comparatively, last year’s Top Gun: Maverick, which also starred Cruise, received a 96% critics score and an astounding 99% audience score. The Mission: Impossible movies have always been highly rated, but for Tom Cruise, such widespread acclaim seems almost a given.
Despite the solid opening, It’s going to take a bit for Dead Reckoning Part One to turn a profit, given its substantial production budget of $290 million. The film needs to maintain strong ticket sales in the coming weeks, but it faces a challenge with only nine days before the competitive weekend of July 21. This weekend will see Barbie and Oppenheimer go head to head, and they are expected to perform extremely well.
Meanwhile, Sound of Freedom continues to surprise the industry with its success. The film about child trafficking starring far-right Qanon hero Jim Caviezel has taken the #2 spot on the box office top ten list and has earned an impressive $27.0 million in its second weekend, marking a 37% increase from its debut last weekend. Such an increase in the second weekend is extremely rare and has contributed to the film’s astonishing $85.5 million gross since its July 4th opening. Angel Studios, the film’s promoter, has employed unconventional marketing tactics, such as the “pay it forward” campaign, encouraging moviegoers to buy tickets for others, which has greatly contributed to the inflated surge in ticket sales. The film has maintained a perfect 100% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes while most top critics are panning the film and have given it a substantially lower score of 72%.
As for Insidious: The Red Door, the surprise first-place finisher from the previous weekend, it had a rough second weekend, dropping to the #3 spot with $13 million in new sales, a 61% decline from its strong opening.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, while still #4 with $12.0 million, experienced a significant 56% decline from the previous weekend. The film is likely to drop out of the top five in the coming weekend, facing stiff competition and fading away thereafter.
Elemental, the latest animated feature from Pixar, continues to display resilience at the box office, securing the #5 spot in its fifth weekend at the box office with an impressive additional earnings of $8.7 million. The film experienced only a slight decline of 13% from the previous weekend.
The movie had a somewhat underwhelming start with an opening weekend gross of $29.6 million, the lowest ever for a Pixar film. However, Elemental managed to bounce back, largely fueled by positive word of mouth and the limited availability of family-friendly options for young children during its run. As of now, Elemental has amassed a total of $125.2 million domestically, exceeding the earnings of last year’s Pixar film, Lightyear, which earned $118.3 million during its entire domestic run.
With Dead Reckoning: Part One as the only new release to hit the box office top ten list this week, the rest of the list are all holdovers from previous weeks. In its seventh weekend in theaters Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse experienced a 25% drop and slipped from the #5 spot to the #6 spot on the box office top ten list. Paramount’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been in theaters for 6 weeks and experienced a 33% drop, earning $3.4 million and took the #7 spot on the box office top ten list.
No Hard Feelings experienced a 39% drop, earned $3.3 million, and took the #8 spot on the list in its fourth week in theaters. Unfortunately, Lionsgate’s Joy Ride is falling hard and slipped from #6 down to the #9 spot on the top ten list in just its second week. After eight weeks in theaters, Disney’s The Little Mermaid has found its way all the way down to the #10 spot on the list after suffering a 36% drop from the previous weekend and earning $2.3 million at the box office.
1. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning: Part One (Paramount) – Cinemascore: A; Metacritic: 81; Est. Budget: $290 million
$56,200,000 in 4,327 theaters; PTA (per theater average): $12,988; Cumulative: $80,004,000
2. Sound of Freedom (Angel) Week 2; Last weekend #3
$27,000,000 (+37%) in 3,265 theaters (+413); PTA: $8,720; Cumulative: $85,499,000
3. Insidious: The Red Door (Sony) Week 2; Last weekend #1
$13,000,000 (-61%) in 3,188 (no change) theaters; PTA: $4,078; Cumulative: $58,086,000
4. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Disney) Week 3; Last weekend #3
$12,000,000 (-56%) in 3,865 (-735) theaters; PTA: $3,105; Cumulative: $145,360,000
5. Elemental (Disney) Week 5; Last weekend #4
$8,700,000 (-13%) in 3,235 (-205) theaters; PTA: $2,689; Cumulative: $125,289,000
6. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony) Week 7; Last weekend #5
$6,050,000 (-25%) in 2,577 (-446) theaters; PTA: $2,348; Cumulative: $368,798,000
7. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (Paramount) Week 6; Last weekend #8; also on PVOD
$3,420,000 (-33%) in 2,041 (-434) theaters; PTA: $1,676; Cumulative: $152,765,000
8. No Hard Feelings (Sony) Week 4; Last weekend #7
$3,300,000 (-39%) in 2,053 (-633) theaters; PTA: $1,607; Cumulative: $46,590,000
9. Joy Ride (Lionsgate) Week 2; Last weekend #6
$2,575,000 (-56%) in 2,820 (no change) theaters; PTA: $913; Cumulative: $10,617,000
10. The Little Mermaid (Disney) Week 8; Last weekend #9
$2,350,000 (-36%) in 1,615 (-465) theaters; PTA: $1,455; Cumulative: $293,917,000
Overall, this weekend’s combined domestic box office earnings for all movies reached $141.0 million, exceeding the same weekend last year, which saw $132.7 million in earnings when Thor: Love and Thunder led all films with $45.2 million in its second weekend.
As of July 13, the box office results for 2023 have reached 112% of the earnings at the same point in 2022 but are only at 80% compared to 2019. The summer movie season continues to be an exciting and unpredictable ride, with films making both anticipated and surprising impacts on audiences worldwide.
