Mission: Impossible 7's Second Weekend at the Box Office: How Did the Movie Do?

Boxoffice Pro estimated that Mission: Impossible--Dead Reckoning, Part One would see its Friday-to-Sunday gross fall 53 percent from the first weekend to the second, working out to a $26 million take over the weekend and $126 million in the till as of Sunday.

Instead the movie suffered a 64 percent drop, working out to a $20 million second weekend and a total of $119 million so far.

By comparison the last Mission: Impossible film, Mission: Impossible--Fallout--had, as of its second weekend, $129 million, and as of its twelfth day in release (a Tuesday, as it came out on a Friday in contrast with the Wednesday release of Mission: Impossible 7), $134 million.
The result is that the movie may be characterized as running between 9 and 11 percent behind Mission: Impossible 6 at this point.

Mission: Impossible 6 ultimately grossed 59 percent of its total in its first ten days in release, and 61 percent of its total in its first twelve. Applied to Mission: Impossible 7 this would leave the movie (again) making just $200 million in North America--while the movie's faster fade at the box office (Fallout's holds were far better, the first-to-second weekend drop just 42 percent) suggests much weaker legs, and thus a higher proportion of all the money it is likely to make in its domestic run already collected. The result is that I expect the movie will finish its domestic run short of the $200 million mark (which, again, would make it a series low in real terms), though how far short remains to be seen.

Accordingly that much more will depend on the film's international take bottom line-wise. So far the film is taking in a smaller proportion of its total overseas than its predecessor--the split 32/68. Unless this gets better $700 million, never mind the $850 million I earlier expected, remains well out of reach.

"Just how much has the rough competition of the weekend of 'Barbenheimer' contributed to the drop?" some are doubtless wondering.

Obviously it did not help, but it also did not hurt very much. The truth is that franchise films like this one have been disappointing at the box office all summer--in fact, after decades of box office-watching I can't remember a single summer that saw so many big movies crash and burn like this (Fast and Furious, Transformers, The Flash, Indiana Jones)--and the falling expectations for Mission: Impossible 7 in the weeks before release, followed by its disappointing opening weekend, were no exception to the trend. Its prospects would probably not have been all that bright even in a weekend of ordinary summer competition. After all, Barbie and Oppenheimer are not competing blockbusters of similar type, but the "counter-programming," catering to fairly different audiences underserved by the usual run of summer fare--such that I suspect few of the people who went to them would have bothered to catch Dead Reckoning instead.

No, instead of blaming unusually strong competition this should be seen as another instance of the increasingly strong pattern of aged, over-the-hill franchises and their sequels that no one asked for being rejected by the audience that didn't ask for them--though admittedly that is something of which neither Barbie, nor Oppenheimer, can be accused.