Tom Cruise’s latest “Mission: Impossible” film and Harrison Ford’s return to the “Indiana Jones” franchise are struggling at the domestic box office as the highly-anticipated summer blockbuster films are estimated to lose $100 million each.
The seventh installment in the M:I franchise, “M:I-Dead Reckoning Part One,” has earned $164,626,507 at the domestic box office as of Monday with “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” bringing in $173,611,344, according to Box Office Mojo. That puts both films behind the surprise hit of the summer “Sound of Freedom” which has earned $177,773,859 as of Monday domestically.
Internationally both films have done better — with the latest “Mission: Impossible,” which came out in July, scoring $541 million at the end of the weekend. And Ford’s reprisal of his famed adventurer’s role in the fifth installment of the Disney franchise, which hit theaters in early June, earning $375 million over the same time frame.
Despite those global numbers, the cost of the making the two films in pandemic era (due to delays in release dates and COVID safety measures), means they both had to do better than they have, with experts estimating both will have lost nearly $100 million in their theater runs, according to sources familiar with the financials, Variety noted.
'Mission: Impossible 7' and 'Indiana Jones 5' both estimated to lose nearly $100 million https://t.co/ojc3WvNynz
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“These movies would have been a lot more economical if it weren’t for COVID,” Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Boxoffice Pro told the outlet. “But even if that meant their budgets were inflated, at the end of the day, these movies cost what they cost and performed how they performed.”
Sources with knowledge told the outlet Cruise’s “M:I-7” needs to earn $600 million globally in order to break even.
To put the numbers of each of the film’s into further context, “Mission: Impossible-Fallout” in 2018 earned $791 million, not adjusted for inflation. While 2008’s “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” remains the franchise’s highest-grossing film after it took in $790 million globally, the outlet noted.
Cruise’s last film before “M:I-7” came out was the smash hit “Top Gun: Maverick” from Paramount. It was released in May 2022, and held the honor of top-grossing movie released last year, earning nearly $1.5 billion globally.