Mission: Impossible Box Office Deja Vu: Tom Cruise Has Second Good Opening Against Lilo & Stitch 

We’re not sure if he chose to accept it intentionally or not, but Tom Cruise has cleared his mission in providing movie theaters with a healthy opening weekend against Disney’s bizarre, Elvis-loving alien for the second time in 23 years. Yep, more than two decades after Cruise shared the same opening frame with the animated Lilo & Stitch in 2002—when the hand-drawn Gen-Z classic went head to head with Cruise and Steven Spielberg’s neo noir sci-fi, Minority Report—the movie star has danced with the little space dude again via Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opening opposite the Lilo & Stitch remake.

And this time, the pecking order is reversed.

Twenty-three years ago, it was considered almost ho-hum when Minority Report topped out above Lilo & Stitch and both films managed to gross north of $35 million. This was otherwise business as usual in a healthy summer movie season where the real anomaly was that the first Spider-Man had become the first movie to cross the $100 million in a weekend a month earlier. At the time, Minority Report did slightly better with $35.7 million versus Lilo’s $35.2 million. But in the year of our streaming lord 2025, it’s a big win for movie theaters that both Final Reckoning and ESPECIALLY Disney’s mostly live-action remake have generated the biggest Memorial Day weekend ever in the U.S., albeit now with Lilo on top via its estimated $180 million opening across four days. For the record, this also snags another benchmark from Cruise by taking the biggest Memorial Day opening record from Top Gun: Maverick ($161 million in 2022). Furthermore, Lilo earned a jaw-dropping $342 million worldwide.

Meanwhile Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is projected to have opened at $77 million across its first four days, and $63 million over the first three days. Some will likely speculate how this can make up for the much gossiped about budget of the film—with Puck News estimating the eighth Mission film costing a gargantuan $400 million—but taken in perspective of the whole franchise, this is a very good start for The Final Reckoning, which was a victim of filming both COVID pauses and delays, and then later having to suspend production because of the 2023 labor strikes.

For context, the previously best opening the M:I series ever saw was when Mission: Impossible – Fallout debuted to $61 million during a conventional three-day weekend in 2018. That movie also is one of the finest action films ever produced and received an “A” CinemaScore. In retrospect, it would seem when a masterpiece of blockbuster cinema like that could not clear $70 million, a definite ceiling on the franchise’s earning potential had slowly materialized in recent years. Consider that the previous best opening in the series was Mission: Impossible II back in 2000, a clean quarter-century ago, when it made $58 million (or about $108 million in 2025 dollars).

In other words, the series’ most popular days are long behind it. Nonetheless, when not counting for inflation, The Final Reckoning has enjoyed the largest opening weekend in the series’ history—including even when you discount the holiday Monday that buoys The Final Reckoning’s opening weekend to $77 million. In one sense, this proves that the goodwill Cruise and Ethan Hunt can still generate with his most loyal audience remains sky high (consider that according to Deadline, Final Reckoning’s biggest demo was with audience members over the age of 55!). In another, it is also confirmation that regaining control of IMAX screens is crucial in the 2020s for a blockbuster with a loyal but relatively contained audience.

After all, this is a big gain for the franchise over Dead Reckoning, which despite having a higher CinemaScore grade from audiences polled than Final Reckoning (an “A” vs. an “A-”) opened below $55 million two years, likely in part because audiences were saving their ticket-buying money for Barbenheimer the following weekend, which included Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer commandeering all the IMAX screens from Mission.

At the end of the day, The Final Reckoning was able to grow business and audience interest over Dead Reckoning and set a franchise record in spite of opening in the same weekend as Disney’s lovable little alien.

Whether it is enough to justify the rumored $400 million price tag is a horse of a different color. However, Cruise has positioned himself as such a champion of movie theater owners and the box office in a post-COVID world that he can certainly take a victory lap in helping deliver a historic win for the industry this Memorial Day. And frankly, given how we remain skeptical that The Final Reckoning is really the franchise’s swan song, we imagine the relative success of this weekend is more than enough proof to suggest there are yet more adventures ahead for the IMF, provided that next time they come in on budget. Now there might be a really challenging stunt…