It took nearly a month, but Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has now overtaken a movie that was designed for a similar big-screen experience. It’s no secret that director Christopher Nolan is a major proponent of theatrical moviegoing, but the only other person in the business who comes close is perhaps star Tom Cruise. Who can forget the sight of a masked Cruise, accompanied by his filmmaker buddy Christopher McQuarrie, going to watch Nolan’s Tenet on the big screen in England at the peak of the pandemic? He risks his life both on and off the screen. And now, the two find themselves neck-and-neck at the box office, with The Final Reckoning having overtaken Nolan’s epic World War II thriller, Dunkirk, at the global box office.
The Final Reckoning has now grossed a total of $509 million worldwide, putting it ahead of Dunkirk, which debuted theatrically in 2017, and became a runaway critical and commercial hit. Like most of Nolan’s movies up till that point, a chunk of Dunkirk was shot on the IMAX format. He has only leveled up since then, with a huge portion of his last film, Oppenheimer, also being filmed on IMAX. In many ways, Oppenheimer completed a journey that began with Dunkirk. The war thriller earned Nolan his first-ever Best Director nod at the Oscars, after he was famously snubbed for his work on 2008’s The Dark Knight. He won for Oppenheimer, which made nearly $1 billion worldwide.
Incidentally, it was the one-two punch of Oppenheimer and Barbie that basically kneecapped Cruise’s previous Mission: Impossible movie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. Released a week after the record-breaking “Barbenheimer” event in 2023, the movie could never recover. It concluded its theatrical run with around $560 million worldwide, against a budget that was reported to be as high as $300 million. The Final Reckoning, which was marketed as the last installment of the long-running action franchise, was even more expensive.
Nolan Is Working on His Epic New Project
According to reports, the film’s budget escalated to $400 million because of the pandemic and strikes. It needs to generate around twice this amount in order to break even. The movie opened to divisive reviews, which isn’t reflected in its mostly positive 80% Rotten Tomatoes score. Dunkirk, on the other hand, cost a fourth of The Final Reckoning, and is more than an hour shorter. It holds a 92% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Nolan is currently at work on his next film, The Odyssey. A teaser trailer is expected to debut alongside Jurassic World: Rebirth. You can watch The Final Reckoning in theaters, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.