The eighth and final Mission: Impossible movie has faced a number of challenges. There were COVID delays that impacted the back-to-back shooting of the seventh and eighth installments together. Then the strikes hit. All in all, there were around nine months of production delays while the meter kept running. Then there was a submarine prop that reportedly cost $25 million.
When all the receipts are counted, it is said to be likely that Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will end up costing over $400 million.
In a report this week via The Town podcast, Puck News commentator Matt Belloni claimed this high figure.
There is a common misconception that a movie has to make 2.5x its budget back in order to turn a profit. This is, unfortunately, simplistic nonsense in the landscape of modern movies.
This would be true if thinking about just distribution and front-end points payouts. However, this is before any marketing costs are taken into account. Marketing costs on modern tentpole blockbusters are frequently anything from $35 million to $100 million on top of the production costs.
Further complicating the picture, but in the more positive column for studios, are lucrative merchandising tie-ins and cross-promotions, plus numerous tax breaks and exemptions available to large productions depending on where they are made.
What will be true for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is that it is likely to need to make more than any other Mission: Impossible movie ever has at the box office to turn a profit. This is a tall order as the franchise has been looking like running out of steam lately.
The previous film, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, came out after the blockbuster landscape had irretrievably shifted post-COVID and took in just $571.1 million from a $291 million budget. Paramount took a $100 million bath on the project.
It turns out there are only so many big things for Tom Cruise to jump off or fall from while being chased due to being disavowed.
Even the most well-reviewed and financially successful installment, 2018s Mission: Impossible – Fallout, only made $791.7 million on release. Not enough to cover the costs involved in this latest entry.
A three-hour cut of the film was recently screened that was reported as being “spectacular” and involved one scene that left audience members hyperventilating.
We will see for ourselves when Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens on May 23rd.