Tom Cruise, as the box-office saying goes, opened Mission: Impossible III. But did TomKat prevent him from opening the movie bigger?
That was the question Sunday as estimates showed the spy sequel finished atop the weekend box office, but on the low end of the expectations game.
Going into the weekend, more than one box-office watcher penciled in a $60 million Friday-Sunday debut for Mission: Impossible III. Instead, the Paramount Pictures release pulled in $47.7 million, per Exhibitor Relations Co.
According to the stats at BoxOfficeMojo.com, the debut is the 57th "biggest" of all time, putting Mission: Impossible III right behind Scary Movie 3.
When asked by the Associated Press if Cruise's personal life--the Katie Holmes affair, the baby, the Brooke Shields battle--was a drag on the box office, Paramount exec Rob Moore said, "I don't think so."
Last summer, when the Cruise-Holmes story was new, Cruise's personal life didn't seem to harm War of the Worlds, which opened with $65 million--the biggest debut of the actor's career. Unlike Mission: Impossible III, War of the Worlds didn't rely solely on Cruise's star power--it was as much a Steven Spielberg movie as a Tom Cruise movie.
With the Cruise-led Mission: Impossible III hitting theaters after a solid year of Cruise-Holmes headlines, Paramount's Moore conceded to the AP that "it concerns us if the press is writing about things other than the movie. If people are writing about his personal life, then by definition, they're not writing about the movie."
Up until a few weeks ago, not much was written about Mission: Impossible III except in passing--the main story being the Cruise-Holmes baby watch. The tabloid-tracked couple, dubbed TomKat, welcomed their first child, daughter Suri, on Apr. 18. After, Cruise, the indefatigable movie star, went on a Mission: Impossible III worldwide publicity blitz.
Cruise's last-minute efforts were not for naught. In Hollywood, Mission: Impossible III got the summer box-office season off to an improved start over 2005. Worldwide, the $150 million movie took in $118 million. And, overall, the film's $47.7 million domestic take represented the third biggest opening of Cruise's career.
On the downside, the opening was well off the $57.8 million debut of M:I-2, and not much bigger than the $45.4 million debut of the original M:I, which opened 10 years ago when tickets were cheaper and screens not as plentiful.
When it came to packing theaters, Mission: Impossible III (dubbed M:I:III in studio promos) wasn't nearly as successful as its predecessors. M:I's opening weekend per-screen average was $15,085. M:I-2's was $15,835. Mission: Impossible III's was $11,777.
Among this weekend's movies, however, the new Mission was the star attraction. The only other film that came close to being a hot ticket was the indie comedy Art School Confidential, which made $142,000 on just 12 screens, for a better-than-M:I:III $11,833 per-screen average.
Elsewhere, RV, last weekend's box-office champ, fell to second, but didn't fall as far or as fast as might be expected of the poorly reviewed family comedy. It hung in there with $11 million ($30.9 million overall), a relatively minor 33 percent drop from this weekend to last.
By comparison, business for United 93 was down 53 percent from its opening weekend. The tough-sell 9-11 docudrama earned $5.3 million ($20.2 million overall) for a fifth-place finish.
An American Haunting and Hoot, the weekend's other two major new releases, didn't look long for the Top 10. The horror flick Haunting scared up $5.8 million (third place); the kid flick Hoot managed just $3.4 million (10th place).
Falling out of the Top 10 were: the Michael Douglas underachiever The Sentinel ($3.1 million; $30.9 million overall); the animated underachiever The Wild ($2.6 million; $32 million overall); and, the bona fide Rob Schneider hit Benchwarmers ($2 million; $55.6 million).
And even though Cruise's Mission failed to take off, overall receipts were up 27 percent from this time last year and 11 percent from last week.
Here's a complete look at the weekend's top-grossing films, based on final studio tallies compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
1. Mission: Impossible III, $47.7 million
2. RV, $11 million
3. An American Haunting, $5.8 million
4. Stick It, $5.5 million
5. United 93, $5.3 million
6. Ice Age: The Meltdown, $4.2 million
7. Silent Hill, $4 million
8. Scary Movie 4, $3.7 million
9. Akeelah and the Bee, $3.369 million
10. Hoot, $3.368 million
(Originally published May 7, 2006 at 2:25 p.m. PT.)