MCS - New 'Mission: Impossible' draws $235M worldwide in opening

2023-07-17 15:01:44 ET

Tom Cruise's star power led Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning Part One ( NASDAQ: PARA ) ( NASDAQ: PARAA ) to the top of the global box office, but it was the latest film to come in behind expectations for grosses, cementing a summer letdown for movies.

Stock in its studio Paramount fell -- ( PARA ) -3.7% , ( PARAA ) -2.9% -- as its newest tentpole grossed $56.2M over the three-day weekend, and just over $80M since its Wednesday opening, according to Comscore.

That total fell short of expected tracking toward $90M.

And the heavily delayed sequel added $155M overseas to result in a global cumulative total of $235M. In particular, it's the latest film to show a growing disconnect for U.S. films in key movie market China: It opened in third place in China (with $25.9M) behind two homegrown films, Never Say Never and Chang An.

The other key movie story of the weekend was the success of faith-based political action film Sound of Freedom (Angel Studios). The child-trafficking story wasn't going to outperform Mission: Impossible, but it did land in the weekend's No. 2 slot with $27M -- a 37% gain from last week (in a time nearly every movie drops by double-digit percentages week-over-week) despite adding only 14% more locations (to appear on 3,265 screens).

And with strong daily attendance, Sound of Freedom has reached a domestic cumulative total of $85.5M in its two weeks in theaters. That put the film into the year's top 20 -- and it's not too far behind notable DC flop The Flash ( WBD ), 13th-best this weekend with just $720,000 in its fifth week, and landing at just $106.8M cumulative so far.

Rounding out the weekend's top films were No. 3, Insidious: The Red Door ( NYSE: SONY ), with $13M; No. 4, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ( DIS ), $12M; No. 5, Elemental ( DIS ), $8.7M; and No. 6 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ( SONY ), $6M.

And with two major releases left for the summer, credit the meme-loving crowd on social media for pushing the "Barbenheimer" double-feature idea: a plan to see strange bedfellows Barbie ( WBD ) and Oppenheimer ( CMCSA ) on the same day next weekend when they open.

AMC Entertainment ( NYSE: AMC ) now reports that 40,000 of its moviegoers have booked tickets for same-day viewings of both the candy-colored fantasy based on the best-selling doll from Mattel ( MAT ), and the dramatic biography of the "father of the atomic bomb."

Cinema tickers: AMC Entertainment ( AMC ); Cineworld ( OTCPK:CNNWQ ); Cinemark ( CNK ); ( IMAX ); Marcus ( MCS ); Reading International ( RDI ); Cineplex ( CGX:CA ); National CineMedia ( NCMI ).

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