China Box Office: Tom Cruise's 'Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation' Crosses $100M

Image from ‘Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation’ courtesy of Paramount

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation has sprinted past the $100 million mark after ten days in China. The Tom Cruise action sequel opened in the world’s second largest moviegoing marketplace last Tuesday with a whopping $18.5 million single-day gross, including $1.5m in midnight showings. That was the fifth biggest single day on record and the biggest ever for a 2D title. It was just ahead of Jurassic World ($17.7m), and behind only Furious 7 ($54.4 million), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($29.2 million) and fellow Transformers: Age of Extinction ($27.4 million), and Terminator Genisys ($26.7 million). Yes, numbers 3, 4, and 5 are Paramount/Viacom titles. And now, ten days into its run, its respective marketplace total is now $102.05m.
That puts it just below the $102.6m gross of the native crime caper Let the Bullets Fly, which means it should be passing said film sometime this afternoon. It ranks as the  in Chinese box office history and should race up the list over the course of the Fri-Sun weekend. The film crossed $630m on Sunday and has now earned at least $640m worldwide and an outside shot at passing the $700m mark this weekend and thus becoming Tom Cruise’s biggest global blockbuster ever. It earned $91m last weekend overseas, so a $60m haul this weekend outside of America is possible, if not outright probable and that updated foreign number is only factoring in the China box office.
Obviously there will be a time and place to discuss the film in terms of its franchise success and its impact on Tom Cruise’s career. But the film itself, slowly making its way to $200 million domestic off a $55m debut (which sadly would be considered leggy in today’s environment) is about to surpass a flurry of recent US hits in China, and it is already the 16th biggest US release ever with plenty still to come.It’s doing it in 2D, as the film is already the second biggest 2D China release from America outside of the soon-to-be-surpassed $121m gross of Interstellar last year.

 

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Unlike Terminator Genisys (also Paramount/Viacom Inc and also Skydance Productions), this one hasn’t been remotely frontloaded. The Arnold Schwarzenegger sequel had a blowout opening day last month but now has basically cashed out at around $115m, or 4.3x opening day-to-total multiplier, which makes it a lot like the domestic path of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ($92m opening day/$381m domestic total). In fact, the film has already surpassed the entire $101m China box office total for Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol.
Obviously there are caveats to be noted. Yes, studios often take as little as 25% of the box office from a given ticket sale. Yes, China only lets around 34 American movies play there each year, which turns the quest to top the global box office into a kind of lottery. And yes, the “all-time grossers” list for China is going to be filled with newer releases as the marketplace has exploded in the last few years. But Minions, a $1 billion grosser outside of China, has barely cracked $28m in the first three days, which isn’t remotely terrible of course. And Adam Sandler’s Pixels has earned a $3.6m two-day gross since opening on Wednesday, which is pretty terrible.
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