1 Box Office Statistic Proves IMAX Was Right To Snub Tom Cruise For Christopher Nolan

New statistics uphold IMAX’s decision to give screens to Oppenheimer instead of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, starring Tom Cruise, premiered on July 12, going on to make $552.7 million at the time of writing, which is less than any Mission: Impossible movie since 2006. A large part of this lukewarm gross has been blamed on the fact that it came out one week before the buzzy July 21 dual release of Barbie and Oppenheimer, which broke box office records and resulted in an extended IMAX run for the Christopher Nolan-helmed Oppenheimer.

IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond recently appeared on an episode of the podcast The Town with Matthew Beloni. During the conversation, Gelfond revealed that “in North America, we’re close to 30 percent” of the entire Oppenheimer box office. These IMAX numbers become even more impressive when Gelfond puts that in context, pointing out that the 400 IMAX theaters only make up “about one percent” of all the theaters in North America.

Oppenheimer’s Box Office Pull Was Undeniable

It’s possible that Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One box office could have performed much better without competition from Barbie and Oppenheimer. Tom Cruise has proved his mettle as a worldwide box office draw time and again, but especially with last year’s Top Gun: Maverick. The legacy sequel to 1986’s Top Gun was a smash hit, earning $1.49 billion and becoming the twelfth highest grossing movie of all time worldwide.

However, IMAX’s gamble with Oppenheimer makes sense. Christopher Nolan is a filmmaker whose name carries weight with mainstream audiences as well as the more highbrow crowd, and he has developed a reputation for epic spectacles with excellent technical construction. His brand of filmmaking means that many audience members likely automatically associate the director with premium formats like IMAX.

This clearly worked in Oppenheimer‘s favor. If that 30 percent figure is completely accurate, this means that the movie earned $90.9 million in North America from IMAX alone, which is more money than some 2023 offerings including Cocaine Bear and No Hard Feelings made in their entire worldwide runs. While this may have led Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One to suffer, it makes sense for the company to have kept the Nolan movie on their screens for as long as possible.