Tom Cruise is not having a good weekend.
Each day of this weekend so far “Mission Impossible: FInal Reckoning” has had steep declines at the box office.
After making $24 million over Thursday and Friday, “FR” dropped to $20 million on Saturday and just $18 million on Sunday.
The result is now $63 million total. “FR” will be lucky to hit $75 million for Memorial Day weekend.
That sounds like a lot but it isn’t for a movie with a $400 million price tag.
The only glimmer of hope is that the international numbers are good, with $127 million coming in already. South Korea ponied up $5 million this week. They loved it! For them the movie has ‘s(e)oul’!
Paramount will need all the foreign countries it can find to make “FR” work to turn a profit.
Another light in the tunnel: this “Reckoning” is running considerably ahead of “Dead Reckoning,” although the first one cost a little less. I didn’t remember exactly how badly “DR” did until looking back at the numbers.
So, what’s going on here? The film’s three hour length certainly makes turnaround difficult. Maybe the basic premise — the AI thing no one understands called The Entity — is losing interest. There’s also no big romantic finish. Cruise and Hayley Atwell do not get together. They are extremely chaste. It’s the opposite of, say, a “Fast and Furious” film which would end with a big congratulatory scene, Champagne bottles popping.
Again, it’s a long summer. “FR” will stick around for some time and may turn out to be a long distance runner.
