When Alex
Gibney’s penetrating and revealing documentary about Scientology – "Going Clear" – was shown on HBO a few months ago, there was lot of discussion about how damaging
it would be towards Tom Cruise’s career.
The revelations
regarding Cruise and his relationship to the bizarre cult (c’mon you can’t call
it a real church) were pretty damaging, and some thought that it could
finally turn filmgoers away from Cruise.
But Cruise
has been counted out before, a number of times, and as always bounced back stronger
than ever. And with the latest "Mission Impossible" installment, subtitled "Rogue
Nation," once again, Cruise proves that he’s the Teflon King.
Actually, it’s
really quite hard for people to turn against you, unless you do something
really vile (like Bill Cosby or The Duggars), or you make a whole string of really
crummy movies (i.e. read my weekend b.o. piece last week about Adam Sandler). And as long as he keeps turning out projects that people like, Cruise will always
be a major movie star. And he knows how to mix it up. There are his "Mission Impossible" big tentpole movies; and then there are his risk-taking ventures, like "Mena" which he’s
shooting now, in which he plays a CIA
drug runner during the 1980’s; and he’s going to follow that up with the Disney
musical, "Bob the Musical."
Cruise
has always been very well liked and respected in the business which goes a long
way. He’s great to work with, generous, works hard and no one works harder to
promote a film all over the world more than Cruise, which studios love. He
believes in what he’s doing.
So it’s not a
surprise then that "Rogue Nation" opened this weekend to some big numbers. It was the No.
1 movie this weekend, with $56 million – the third biggest weekend opening for any
Cruise movie after "War of the Worlds," which opened with $64 million, and "MI 2," which opened with $57 million. The film,
which was heavily promoted by Paramount all over the world, also opened overseas, in Korea, the UK, Mexico and Australia, with another $70 million; and considering that the last "MI" film – "Ghost Protocol" – grossed about $700 million
worldwide, "Rogue Nation," at this stage, looks like it will equal or surpass that
amount.
It’s safe to assume that the movie will be No.1 again next weekend, until "Straight Out of Compton" opens in two weeks, which is expected to open very strongly, especially after the near rave advance reviews that film has been getting.
In second
place this weekend was "Vacation," the remake/reboot/sequel to 1983’s "National Lampoon’s
Vacation," which stalled at $14 million, much less that the $25 million
insiders were predicting the film would gross. Look for it to not be around much longer.
Meanwhile "Ant Man," "Minions" and "Trainwreck" are still holding on, while "Pixels" and "Paper Towns" both took huge drops, especially the latter, which dropped some 63% from last
weekend.
And once
again, for the second week in a row, the
Bollywood film, "Bajrangi Bhaijaan," was in 12th place, with $7.1 million, which makes
it the largest grossing Bollywood film ever in the U.S., beating out "Chennai
Express" in 2013.
