The Tom Cruise effect: Nothing's impossible

Tom Cruise in a scene from Mission: Impossible - Fallout. Photo / supplied

After six movies, 22 years, countless bruises and a broken ankle, Tom Cruise's death-defying Mission: Impossible stunts continue to pay off at the box office.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout easily took the No1 spot on the domestic charts this weekend. Paramount Pictures estimated it earned US$61.5 million ($90 million) from 4386 North American theatres.

Not accounting for inflation, it's a best for the long-running franchise, which has grossed US$2.8 billion worldwide, and one of Cruise's biggest too (just shy of War of the Worlds' US$64.9m debut in 2005).

Internationally, the film earned US$92m from 36 markets, which was also a franchise best.

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Fallout has scored some of the best reviews in the series and has been in the news cycle for almost a year.

Talk about the film started early, in August 2017, when Cruise broke his ankle performing a stunt in London, with video to prove it.

"Paramount was strategically perfect in their marketing and publicity game," said comScore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

"They showed how important a star's presence is in marketing the movie early on. Tom Cruise broke his ankle and they made that into a positive for the movie - it fed the Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible mystique."

Second place went to Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, which fell 57 per cent in its second weekend in theatres, to earn US$15m.

Denzel Washington's The Equalizer 2 slid to third with US$14m in weekend two, and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation took fourth with US$12.3m.

The animated Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, a feature spinoff of the Cartoon Network television show about Robin and some of the lesser-known DC superheroes, was the only major film to open against Fallout.

The Warner Bros release earned US$10.5m and landed in fifth place.

The film earned positive reviews from critics and younger audiences, but also faced a fair amount of animated competition from both Hotel Transylvania 3 and Incredibles 2, which was still going strong in its seventh weekend and headed toward the $1b mark.

As of yesterday, the Disney/Pixar sequel had earned an estimated US$996.5m globally.

But although US$10.5m might seem on the lower side, Teen Titans also cost only US$10m to produce.

"Family movies like this will play for a lot of weeks," said Warner Bros' domestic distribution president Jeff Goldstein.

"The whole objective of this movie was to work with our cousins in other Warner units for brand identification."

- AP