Outposters. We bring you sad news. For nearly two decades now there has been one Hollywood constant. In these turbulent times, and in that most disappointing of cities, you could always rely on something. That something was Tom Cruise. Regardless of anything else, Tom Cruise always brought his A-Game, and he never just phoned it in. So committed was the Cruiser to this, that it was theorized that in Tom Cruise’s world, there was no acknowledgment of the existence of the alphabet beyond the letter “A” and he didn’t even own a telephone. Didn’t even know what one was. Didn’t need one, as he never phones it in.
It is with a heavy heart that we must confirm, beloved Outposters, that Tom Cruise does, in fact, own a telephone. Not only that, but he is using it. According to reports in the UK’s Daily Mail, he is taking the unusual step of personally getting studio executives on the phone and trying to secure a longer run on premium screens for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
Steven Spielberg credited Cruise with “saving Hollywood’s ass” with Top Gun: Maverick. So will they listen to him? Mission: Impossible 7 is out on July 12th, two days earlier in the week than a usual release. It will be the only movie on premium IMAX screens that week. However the week after that Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer takes over. That gets a three-week exclusive IMAX run.
Cruise has apparently been calling up studio execs in hopes of pushing Oppenheimer off some IMAX screens in favor of Mission: Impossible 7, or replacing the Barbie movie on other premium format screens. The news website quotes information from Puck News reporter Matthew Belloni who says Cruise has “expressed his extreme displeasure” that Universal won’t move an inch.
$110 million of the Top Gun: Maverick $1.49 billion global gross came from IMAX, so Cruise knows the earning power of the format is required to break records. One issue is likely to be that Nolan is a champion of the format and Oppenheimer is shot completely in that format, whereas Mission: Impossible used the technology only for big scenes. Nolan is likely to have had this kind of thing stipulated in contracts when he moved across from Warner Bros. during the day-and-date release row over COVID cinema releases. Universal is unlikely to be able to move, even if it wanted to.
Why do we get the feeling that a telephone call from a highly-focused Tom Cruise might actually be a little bit terrifying?
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