Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” got a strong start at the box office, hitting tracking expectations with a $61.5 million opening weekend from 4,386 screens.
While previous installments in the Tom Cruise action series have had higher openings after inflation adjustments are made, this is the highest raw opening for a “Mission: Impossible” film, topping the $57 million launch for the 2000 sequel “Mission: Impossible II.” It’s also the second highest opening of Cruise’s career — only “War of the Worlds” tops it with $64 million — and is the highest opening for a Paramount film since “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” in 2014.
Critics have praised “Fallout” as the best installment of the “M:I” series, scoring 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and it is the first “M:I” film to earn an A on CinemaScore. On the premium format side, IMAX is reporting that 12 percent of the movie’s domestic gross came from their screens, with $7.5 million grossed on 406 North American IMAX screens and an additional $5 million grossed overseas.
In a distant second is Universal “Mamma Mia!: Here We Go Again,” which earned $15 million in its second weekend. While that gives the jukebox musical a solid 10-day total of $70 million, the weekend total is lower than the $17.7 million second weekend made by the first “Mamma Mia!,” and the sequel faced a 57 percent drop-off from its $34.9 million opening compared to 36 percent for its predecessor. It has a global total of $167 million with releases several more countries, including China, coming next weekend.
“The Equalizer 2,” meanwhile, took a 61 percent drop from its $36 million opening to finish third this weekend with a $14 million total. While the Denzel Washington crime thriller has a production budget less than half that of “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” the presence of the much more popular “M:I” in theaters will likely weigh down numbers for this Sony release, which has a 10-day total of $64 million.
Completing the top five are Sony’s “Hotel Transylvania 3” and Warner Bros.’ “Teen Titans Go! to the Movies,” with “HT3” earning $12.2 million in its third weekend to beat the opening of its animated DC competitor and bring its domestic total to $119 million.
“Teen Titans Go!,” meanwhile, was expected by trackers to open around $14-15 million but will finish below that with a $10.5 million launch. But making money back on this Cartoon Network adaptation won’t be hard as it was made on a $10 million budget with a thrifty marketing spend that focused mostly on digital ads. Critics gave the film a 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with audiences giving it a B+ on CinemaScore.
Outside the top 10, “Ant-Man and the Wasp” has passed the domestic total of its 2015 predecessor, making $8.4 million in its fourth weekend to bring its total to $183 million. Globally, the film has a total of $394 million with an opening in the U.K. coming next week. “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” is on the threshold of crossing $400 million domestically, and with a global total of $1.23 billion, it will pass Universal’s top grossing film from last year, “The Fate of the Furious.”
“Incredibles 2” will become the 36th film in box office history to gross $1 billion worldwide tomorrow after adding $7.2 million domestically in its seventh weekend to push its global total to $997 million. When it hits that milestone, it will become only the fourth billion-dollar film to make at least half of its global gross from North America, joining “Black Panther,” “Rogue One” and “The Dark Knight.” Overseas, the film still has releases to come in several major markets, including Japan, Spain, Italy and Germany.