Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning hits theaters on May 23, 2025. It’s one of the most expensive films ever made, with an estimated budget of about $400 million, so Paramount needs a big box office take to turn a profit.
Note that:
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning’s budget was $291 million, and the film reportedly lost Paramount between $100 million and $200 million. This was even after making $567.5 million at the box office.
The previous movie loses a substantial amount of money so they spend over $100 million more on this one. My guess is that they are going to lose even more, since if anything I think there may be a declining interest in the franchise.
But the big question is if this is the end of the franchise? Tom Cruise is 62.
If this is a hit there will be a new tough guy to replace the aging Cruise. Just like Bond is renewable, so is MI. Heck, MI is far less personal than Bond is.
AFAICT, it cost $291m to make, which would’ve meant that even grossing $640m would’ve fallen short of pulling in 2.2x that — but factoring in the $71m payout they got from the insurance company means the $571m it grossed went past the 2.2x mark, right?
Completely disagree here. Modern Mission Impossible is completely a vehicle for Tom Cruise and his stunts. The series is more closely tied to him than Bond ever was up a particular actor, even Connery.
After 29 years, Cruise is the franchise. Without him, what does it have to distinguish it? It has the music, and it has the improbable rubber masks. That’s it.
I really do not care who the actors are in any show; they’re simply vehicles to carry the character. And in any franchise, that character is fairly mutable over time. To me there’s no such thing as e.g. “a Tom Cruise” movie. instead there are “movies; some of which have Tom Cruise in them.”
Which seems to be a minority approach to entertainment in general; lotta folks are far more invested in the performers than the performance.
It’s a great series(except for 2) and I think that the last one showed the signs of covid stress during its production. The big chase sequence in the middle was actually filmed with no script, so what you see is people pretending like they know what the plot is.
The only totally complete segment was the train sequence at the end. You can tell because its edit feels normal and it is great stuff.
I hope this one is better and I also hope that Tom Cruise on a biplane isn’t the main stunt. I wish they would not show us the best and biggest stunt in the commercials!
Yeah, but when they do that it’ll save you the $100 you’d otherwise spend to see it in a theater. And save you two hours.
I mean imagine if e.g. Morton’s Steakhouse gave away 10z medium rare filet mignons at a stand out front hoping to entice you to come in. Who would bother? Just say “Thank you”, keep walking, and snarf that sucker letting the juice run down your arms. Then circle around for second pass.
I like the MI films (even 2) to the point that I think they are the best “Bond films”. They do what Bond used to do.
Given that, must every film be the biggest, baddest, most world altering events evah? Can’t we just have a normal mission (this applies to the Bond franchise, too, and they must have realized it, because after the ridiculous over the top Moonraker they went back to a straight spy caper)?
And how many times are his bosses going to believe Hunt has gone rogue and actively work against him before he just says “fuck those guys”? Can’t we have a film where he has full support?
But I’ll be there when it opens. What can I do, I’m hooked.
The news that Tom Cruise’s “Ethan Hunt” cannot be replaced will come as a complete shock to Steven Hill’s “Dan Briggs” and Peter Graves’ “Jim Phelps”. BTW, if you have no problem turning a character like Jim Phelps into a bad guy, then turning Ethan Hunt into a bad guy should be a piece of cake.
I have to point out, among all this financial discussion, that published film budgets don’t include film production tax credits, which are usually accounted to the production company in a separate item. They can be quite large, and scanning filming locations for MI7/8, they all seem to be in countries with at least 25% credits (to applicable expenses).
In just the UK for example, Paramount UK claims to have spent about $1B across the latest three MI films, but also gotten credits of ~$150M.
Wow, that would be an interesting end to the franchise! Have Hunt finally actually go rogue. Have the NY farmboy finally lose his do-gooder-ness and flag-waving all-American heart and unleash hell on the CIA and the world.
And have him killed at the end. Maybe by Luther. And it means something.
OMG I’m so there!
and then we can have films with a new character Dan Briggs who uses disguises and runs missions like con jobs.
I was upset in Kingsmen where Obama was in on the murderous plan, so having the orange menace and President Musk be killed by Hunt in the film would be, as they say, AWESOME.
He never really goes rogue in Fallout. There’s a brief moment where he’s accused of going rogue, but it’s all a big act to fool the bad guy. And it looks the trailer for this one is setting up leadership going “okay, I guess we need him.”
