The blockbuster
Tom Cruise’s box-office purchase has actually been on the wane this decade, with diminished openings and final grosses for his run of work from 2010’s Knight and Day through Rock of Ages and Jack Reacher, to two fairly strong sci-fi films in the shape of Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow. The $56m (£36m) US debut for the Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is a tonic for the Cruiser then, reaffirming his A-list status in his fourth decade of stardom: his third-biggest debut behind 2006’s War of the Worlds ($64m) and 2000’s Mission: Impossible II ($57.8m).
Perhaps more intriguing is what the size of the debut says about Paramount’s 20-year-old franchise. $56m is solid, but not exactly the stuff of the contemporary global tentpole; it’s less than Ant-Man opened at a fortnight ago. Spaced apart at roughly four-year intervals, with tenuous narrative links, and Cruise the only consistent focus, each episode has to do more heavy lifting than the average franchise fodder to persuade film-goers of its individual appeal.
High-calibre set-pieces are an M:I selling point, and strapping its star to the outside of a plane – exploited to the max in the publicity – certainly helped push Rogue Nation beyond its tracking predictions (about $40m). On paper it’s the second-best M:I debut (1: $45.4m, 2: $57.8m, 3: $47.7m, 4: $42.4m, 5: $56m), but correcting for inflation (1: $69.1m, 2: $80m, 3: $56.4m, 4: $44.9m, 5: $56m) gives a slightly different picture: one of a franchise pedalling hard to stand still, at least in the US.
Where instalment four, Ghost Protocol, really made ground was internationally, gaining emerging markets Russia, India and the UAE as filming locations to push through to a series high of $694.7m. That expansion looks set to continue with this week’s initial overseas sweep of $65m in 40 territories – 32 of them delivering the biggest M:I debut yet. South Korea, with $17.1m was key, – 76% up on Ghost Protocol, for which it was the third-biggest market.
The far east has always been mad for M:I – Japan was the top country for the first three, until the massively expanding Chinese market dislodged it with a $101.2m take on Ghost Protocol. With Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba chipping in to Rogue Nation’s budget, you can’t imagine that will change when the film opens there on 8 September. The mission – and Paramount have to accept it – is to beat $900m and prove the M:I is a top-level assignment in the franchise world.
Town ain’t big enough
YA lightning isn’t striking twice for Fox. After managing the sleeper hit ($307.2m) of 2014 with cancer romance The Fault in Our Stars, they rushed another John Green adaptation, Paper Towns, into production: same $12m budget, similar tale of moony outsiders, another pair of fresh faces leading the line (Cara Delevingne and Nat Wolff in for Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort).
Reviewed respectably enough, it’s not having the same impact: down almost 75% on Fault at the same stage in the US, and crucially not landing with the same unexpected splash in Latin and South America. Brazil and Mexico, overseas markets No 1 and No 3 for Fault, have debuted about 50% under – the case roughly across the board so far. What happened? It could be a case of small margins adding up: Delevingne and Wolff lacking the small measure of awareness Woodley and Elgort carried over from the first Divergent film, another YA gig. Fault was also perfect, girl-centric counter-programming to the 2014 World Cup. Then there’s the premise itself – an enigmatic girl-next-door ropes her besotted childhood friend into her revenge scheme – doesn’t quite have Fault’s grabby, magazine-confession succinctness. Paper Towns’ current $50m total means it’s already profitable – but this one won’t be a licence to print money.
Bolly-watch
Ajay Devgn had the unenviable task of following up Telugu war epic Baahubali and Salman Khan vehicle Bajrangi Bhaijaan at the Indian box office with his psychological thriller, Drishyam. A remake of the 2013 Malayalam film about a small-town cable TV salesman caught in a blackmail sting by the son of the local police inspector, it faces off second-tier Bollywood star Devgn against Tabu (Life of Pi) as the cop. An efficient, almost beat-by-beat reprisal that somehow lets the grittiness of the original slip through its fingers, it still made 30.8 crore ($4.8m) this weekend, according to estimates. Not quite in the league of flashier Devgn material such as Singham (44.2 crore debut), but not bad given the more sombre material, apparently slipped into the star’s schedule after production on his Diwali 2016 extravanganza Shivaay was delayed.
Still straddled, shirt blithely unbuttoned, over Indian cinemas was Baahubali, now past the 500-crore mark ($78.1m) worldwide; only Aamir Khan’s Dhoom 3 (542 crore) and PK (735 crore) stand taller. It probably won’t pass them, lacking the kind of global distribution to the Hindi-speaking diaspora that has propelled fellow big-hitter Bajrangi Bhaijaan to over 400 crore now. But Telugu film-makers must be hoping it’s the thin end of a wedge, having done what so few Telugu films do and broken out well beyond the regional releases they’re normally allotted.
Beyond Hollywood
Still keeping pace with Ant-Man in a fraction of the cinemas, the No 1 Chinese film of all time, Monster Hunt – covered in depth last week – was still at No 5 on the global chart, leading the string of local hits making hay during the seemingly endless Hollywood blackout period. Holdovers Jianbing Man and Monkey King: Hero is Back, both well over $100m now, are hanging in at 15th and 16th place, below a couple of new entries. Tang-era imperial romance Lady of the Dynasty, starring the crazy-popular, doe-eyed Fan Bingbing (Iron Man 3), took a tepid $9m for 12th global spot; in at 13, Hong Kong veteran Ringo Lam’s comeback thriller Wild City an underwhelming $8.5m – the $29m smackdown enjoyed by Tony Jaa’s SPL 2 a few weeks ago should have been more its kind of ballpark.
Both are still better than the second part of John Woo’s “Chinese Titanic”, The Crossing, panned by Variety as having “nothing meaningful to say”, and which didn’t register in the slightest. The only non-Chinese entry on the chart in eighth place was 1930s Korean insurrection thriller The Assassination. Beaten to the local top spot by Rogue Nation, its $44m cumulative is still level with director Choi Dong-hoon’s 2012 smash The Thieves at the same point. The latter – an excellently kinetic riff on Ocean’s Eleven – went on to be the country’s second-highest-grossing local film.
The future
The Marvel flickbook logo hits our screens once again – this time, for one of its leased-out properties: Fox’s Fantastic Four reboot. Dropping in 60 markets next weekend, including the US, Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B Jordan and Jamie Bell step into the vacated superpowered roles in Josh Trank’s film – likely to be a less formally radical proposition than his Chronicle and which seems to have swigged some Chris Nolan-esque dourness in development. The risk is that that kind of grim-faced take – post-Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man – is five years too late, and Fox will once again fail to propagate the franchise: the first stab in 2005 took $330.6m worldwide, dropping to $289m for 2007’s Rise of the Silver Surfer. Jurassic World – now the third highest grossing film ever, as reported recently – also emerges from the foliage in its final territory, Japan, with $1.56bn currently on the clock. It would need to make $500m there to catch up with the No 2 film, Titanic; the country was apex overseas predator for the first three films, but I doubt its appetite is that big.
Top 10 global box office, 31 July-2 August
1. (New) Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, $121m from 41 territories – 53.7% international; 46.3% US
2. Minions, $51.3m from 63 territories. $854.7m cumulative – 66.4% int; 33.6% US
3. Ant-Man, $32.6m from 51 territories. $291.6m cum – 54.6% int; 45.4% US
4. Pixels, $30.2m from 75 territories. $102.1m cum – 55.3% int; 44.7% US
5. Monster Hunt, $27m from 6 territories. $279m cum – 100% int
6. Inside Out, $22.3m from 52 territories. $602.3m cum – 45.3% int; 54.7% US
7. (New) Vacation, $14.9m from 1 territory. $21.2m cum – 100% US
8. The Assassination, $12.7m from 1 territory. $44m cum – 100% int
9. Paper Towns, $10.6m from 58 territories. $49.5m cum – 51.9% int; 48.1% US
10. Southpaw, $10.5m from 8 territories. $41.6m cum – 24.1% int; 75.9% US
• Thanks to Rentrak. This week’s figures are based on estimates; all historical figures unadjusted, unless otherwise stated.
