Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Testing Better Than Ghost Protocol

In 2011, Brad Bird's Ghost Protocol breathed new life into the Mission: Impossible film [...]

In 2011, Brad Bird's Ghost Protocol breathed new life into the Mission: Impossible film franchise. It is hard to believe that the next film in the series could top it, but according to test audiences Rogue Nation will.

"It's a phenomenal movie and I think I'm officially allowed to say that we tested even higher than Ghost Protocol," Skydance Productions CCO Dana Goldberg told Collider. "There's not a lot of times in your life, you dream about them, but those moments you go to a preview screening and everybody's there, your director, your star, the studio, you sit there and from the second the movie starts, you're just like 'oh, this feels really, really good'. It feels that way from top to bottom, and then they walk in and they tell you what the audience thought and it felt even better to the audience than it did to you, and that's how we felt in Arizona a couple weeks ago."

Even if Rogue Nation is scoring better than Ghost Protocol the true test that Paramount cares about will be box office performance. Ghost Protocol is the highest-grossing Mission: Impossible film with $694.7M as well as being Tom Cruise's top grossing film. Top that, Rogue Nation!

With the IMF now disbanded and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) out in the cold, a new threat -- called the Syndicate -- soon emerges. The Syndicate is a network of highly skilled operatives who are dedicated to establishing a new world order via an escalating series of terrorist attacks. Faced with what may be the most impossible mission yet, Ethan gathers his team and joins forces with Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), a disavowed British agent who may or may not be a member of this deadly rogue nation.

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation lands in theaters July 31st.