Mission: Impossible Star Tom Cruise Frustrated With Oppenheimer’s IMAX Exclusivity

Just one year after “saving movies” with Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise is going into battle about the theatrical rollout of his next film, and it’s a battle he’s probably not going to win. Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is hitting theaters on July 12th and has booked a majority of the country’s IMAX theaters. Mission: Impossible is the kind of action movie tailor-made for enormous, premium theaters like IMAX and Dolby. Unfortunately, Dead Reckoning will have a very, very short window on those IMAX screens, thanks to Christopher Nolan.

Oppenheimer, Nolan’s new film, opens on July 21st, a little over a week after Mission: Impossible 7. The Universal picture has every IMAX screen in North America booked not only for its opening week, but for three entire weeks after release. Oppenheimer, which was filmed entirely with IMAX cameras, will be the only movie screening on IMAX theaters for three entire weeks.

According to a new report from Puck News, Cruise is very frustrated about the situation. He’s apparently been complaining “loudly” to executives at Paramount about the situation. He’s also been calling around to studio and theater executives, trying to open up as many premium large format screens as possible for Dead Reckoning. 

The battle for IMAX and other premium format theaters is important for big budget films nowadays. Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick is a prime example of just how helpful those pricier theatrical experiences can be. Maverick earned $110 million just from IMAX theaters, with likely hundreds of millions more coming from other premium formats. Those screens being taken away from Mission: Impossible so quickly could easily take a large chunk out of its final box office haul.

As Puck points out, Oppenheimer had settled on its release date months before Dead Reckoning moved to its current release date. The competition from Nolan was always going to be there and the Oppenheimer filmmaker has had a long-standing relationship with IMAX. Oppenheimer being shot exclusively with IMAX cameras likely went a long way towards helping him secure such a lengthy exclusive window.