Being hyped as the beginning of a huge box office summer, Mission Impossible III opened far below what it was expected to take in. This is in spite of opening at over 4,000 theaters and a large publicity push involving star, Tom Cruise.
Including the American and Canadian markets it took in $48 million in its first three days according to distributor Paramount Pictures.
Its international success was much higher as it earned over $70 million opening essentially everywhere except Japan and India.
Competing studios commented that they had expected the movie to take in at least $60 million domestically. The overall cost for the film was a little under $150 million to produce.
It was hard to make a comparison with past "Mission Impossible" films as they had opened on much stronger Memorial Day weekends in the past where business has always been historically stronger.
The first "Mission" ended up earning $180.9 million and the second mission came in at $215.4 million.
This film featured the directing debut of "Alias" and "Lost" creator J.J. Abrams.
Because of his recent antics, Cruise has been reported to be losing his female fan base, Paramount responded that the demographics for this movie was the same as the previous "Mission Impossible" movies with 64 percent of the viewers being 25 or older, and 56 percent being male.
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