‘Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation’ tops the North American box office

“Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” topped the local box office last weekend, pushing the star-studded Korean action film “Assassination” down to second place, data showed Monday.

Jake Gyllenhaal boxing drama Southpaw, perhaps recipient of negative word of mouth, dropped to seventh with $7.5 million, with Paper Towns ($4.6 million) and Inside Out ($4.5 million) taking eighth and ninth places. The reboot earned $21.2-M for the Wednesday-Sunday stretch, including $14.9-M for the weekend, $30-M was expected.

In fourth was animated comedy “Minions“, featuring three yellow mischief-making creatures from the film’s first instalment “Despicable Me“, bringing in US$12.2 million. SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

In the film, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), super-agent for the Impossible Missions Force (IMF), and his team take on their most impossible mission yet, eradicating the Syndicate – an global rogue organization as highly skilled as they are. In the first 17 days since it was released, “Ant-Man” has made about $132 million in the US and Canada. The Adam Sandler comedy “Pixels” came in fifth.

On this evidence, Mission: Impossible and its gung-ho leading man won’t be self-destructing any time soon. In fact, Cruise’s star power is being credited with the movie’s impressive overseas numbers. “We’ll probably start shooting it next summer”.

In an interview with Variety, Paramount vice chairman Rob Moore confirmed Tom Cruise’s revelation about a “Mission: Impossible 6” movie. If you havent had a chance to see the film yet, you may want to click away to another one of our wonderful articles.

While some stars might have stormed out over the mix up, Cruise was every inch the gentleman and just laughed at the embarrassing incident. The 2005 movie “Bewitched”, which had a meta plotline involving actors filming a “Bewitched” remake, didn’t do well either. The movie has also been an initial hit internationally.

The overall box office for the weekend is down significantly compared with the same weekend a year ago when Disney/Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” opened with a stunning US$94.3 million weekend.

None of the “Mission: Impossible” movies have debuted with over $100 million domestically, with majority averaging about half that. No wonder he’s known as “Mr friendly Tom” and “Mr gentleman”, in South Korea.