Director Christopher McQuarrie thinks Mission: Impossible 7 will “crush” Top Gun at the box office, but that means the movie has to make $1.5 billion.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is the first part of an epic two-part story in the blockbuster franchise, but it has the difficult task of beating Top Gun: Maverick’s phenomenal box office performance. Top Gun: Maverick was the biggest financial success of Cruise’s career, and it stayed in theaters for months thanks to positive word of mouth. The Mission: Impossible franchise has made $3.5 billion in total, and if Mission: Impossible 7 matches Top Gun: Maverick’s success, that’ll bring the franchise total up to $5 billion. That’d be a huge win for Paramount, but it isn’t going to be all that easy.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One may contain just as much high-octane action and just as many deadly stunts performed by Cruise as Top Gun: Maverick, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be as successful as the long-awaited sequel. Mission: Impossible 7 director Christopher McQuarrie has already made it his mission to “Crush Top Gun.” There’s no doubt that Cruise, too, wants to repeat that success. He has enough star power and the franchise is popular enough that the movie will undoubtedly be successful regardless of its quality, but crushing Top Gun: Maverick will be a struggle.
Why Mission: Impossible 7 Probably Won’t Beat Top Gun 2’s Box Office
The Mission: Impossible franchise has never reached a billion dollars before, despite being a long-running and popular movie franchise, so reaching $1.5 billion is a huge ask. Top Gun: Maverick made almost $1.5 billion at the box office (via Box Office Mojo), which is almost double what the last Mission: Impossible movie, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, made worldwide. Top Gun: Maverick’s domestic gross alone was $718 million, which is already almost as much as Mission: Impossible – Fallout’s worldwide earnings without even taking into account the international gross.
That essentially means that Mission Impossible: Death Reckoning Part One has to make two times what its predecessor made, something that the series has never done on this scale before. The marketing of Mission: Impossible 7 is doing a great job at showcasing how it’s the most ambitious movie in the series yet, and that it’s the first part of an epic two-part finale, so that could help its chances at rivaling Top Gun: Maverick. However, Universal had the same idea with Fast X, and Fast X massively underperformed at the box office. If any Mission: Impossible movie could rival Top Gun: Maverick’s success, it’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two.
Will Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One Make Over $1 Billion?
Not only is it extremely unlikely that Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One will come close to Top Gun: Maverick’s $1.5 billion number, but it’s unlikely that the seventh Mission: Impossible movie will reach a billion either. Mission: Impossible 7 will have an even bigger struggle due to its 165-minute runtime. Movies of that length generally don’t break box office records, while Top Gun: Maverick’s lean 130-minute runtime meant more showings per day, and general audiences are more likely to see a two-hour movie than one that’s almost three hours.
Not only that but Top Gun: Maverick appealed to all ages, as fans who saw the original movie in theaters almost 40 years ago were showing up at multiplexes. Mission: Impossible 7 doesn’t have that mass appeal. However, Mission: Impossible 7 does have a few things going for it that can help its chances. Firstly, the success of Top Gun: Maverick could help the movie, as Tom Cruise is so closely connected to the legacy sequel, and the high-profile movie gained so much attention and popularity, and it was universally praised by critics too.
As a result, the Cruise-starring Mission: Impossible movie being released while Top Gun: Maverick is still firmly in everyone’s consciousness will greatly benefit the movie. On top of that, while no Mission: Impossible movie has ever come close to reaching the billion-dollar mark, the series has been on a mostly upward trajectory at the box office (via The Numbers). Mission: Impossible – Fallout made $786 million worldwide, almost $100 million more than its predecessor, so Mission: Impossible 7 could be another huge leap, especially being hot off the heels of Top Gun: Maverick.
Tom Cruise May Never Better Top Gun: Maverick’s Box Office Total
While Mission: Impossible 8 could reach over the billion-dollar mark if Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One makes a big enough splash, it’s unlikely that Cruise will ever see the same box office success again. Following Mission: Impossible 8, which could be the last movie in the franchise starring Cruise, the actor doesn’t have any other blockbuster franchises. Other upcoming movies he has talked about, such as the Tropic Thunder sequel, won’t come close to the $1.5 billion number, and Top Gun: Maverick is the only Cruise-starring movie that has made over a billion dollars, as surprising as that sounds.
