Mission Impossible: Fallout was released back at the end of July and instantly became one of the surprise hits of the summer. The sixth installment in the franchise kicked up the adrenaline to eleven, with Tom Cruise doing HALO jumps, falling from helicopters and jumping across rooftops. Unlike many stars today, Cruise didn’t use a stunt double for these sequences. Although he paid a price for this, as he broke his ankle doing one of the jumps. The studio may have felt the hit more than Tom did and this sadly have wider implications for action movies in general.
Following the accident, production had to stop for a few weeks. The implication of this is that the movies budget rose by approximately $70 million according to the Hollywood Reporter. This was due to insurance payouts and costs associated with rearranging filming whilst Cruise recovered. The reported budget of the latest installment became $250 million. The total amount of money earned by the last Mission Impossible movie in America was reported to be in the region of $195 million (adjusted for inflation). There is the international box office to add as well but the implication is that for Fallout’s budget to increase by that much, it will be increasingly difficult for the studio, Paramount, to break even in their domestic market. Something which studio’s strive to do.
The problem with this going forward is, will the likes of Paramount be reluctant to allow big stars to do their own stunts out of fear their budgets will balloon? Studios need to create solid hits on that they know will break even without a sweat. And even though seeing Cruise jump out of a plane is really awesome, $70 million is a massive price for a studio to pay.
By Matt Walker
