‘Fallout’ is Cruise’s biggest ‘M:I’ debut yet
LOS ANGELES – After six movies, 22 years, countless bruises and a broken ankle, Tom Cruise’s death-defying “Mission: Impossible“stunts continue to pay off at the box office.
“Mission: Impossible – Fallout” easily took the No. 1 spot this weekend. Paramount Pictures estimates that it earned $61.5 million from 4,386 North American theaters.
Not accounting for inflation, it’s the best opening weekend for the long-running franchise, which has grossed $2.8 billion worldwide. It’s one of Cruise’s biggest openings, too, just shy of his “War of the Worlds” $64.9 million debut in 2005. Internationally, “Fallout” earned $92 million from 36 markets, also a franchise best.
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, “Fallout” has scored some of the best re- views in the series and has been in the news cycle for almost a year. Talk about the film started last August, when Cruise broke his ankle performing a stunt in London with video to prove it.
“Paramount was strategically perfect in their marketing and publicity game,” says comScore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “They showed how important a star’s presence is in market- ing the movie early on. Tom Cruise broke his ankle, and they made that into a positive for the movie – it fed the mystique.”
Second place went to ABBA-inspired “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again,” which fell 57 percent in its second weekend in theaters to earn $15 million. It was a much steeper decline than the first film, which dropped only 36 percent between its first and second weekends.
Denzel Washington’s “The Equalizer
2” slid to third with $14 million in its second weekend, and the animated monster movie “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation” took fourth with
$12.3 million.
“Teen Titans Go! to the Movies,” a feature spinoff of the Cartoon Network TV show about Robin and some of the lesser-known DC superheroes, was the only major film to open against “Fallout.” The Warner Bros. release earned
$10.5 million and landed in fifth place. Final figures are expected Monday.