Tom Cruise, age 56, just had his biggest grossing movie of all time, with Mission: Impossible – Fall Out. How? It’s all in the nail-biting, adrenaline-fuelled stunts…
So, it turns out, all you need to do to land your biggest-ever box office is chuck yourself out of a plane. If only Hollywood had known before, they could have saved themselves a right load of bother. And, maybe, suggested it to Adam Sandler, which would have saved us all from The Ridiculous Six.
How Tom Cruise will top his marquee stunt in this summer’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout is presumably something he and director Christopher McQuarrie are busy pondering now. But whatever insanity he next subjects himself to, there’s no question his sky-high efforts were worth it.
At $790 million in global ticket sales, the 56-year-old’s sixth outing as superspy Ethan Hunt isn’t just his most successful movie, it’s $110 million up on previous instalment, Rogue Nation. That’s not just impressive; it’s pretty much unheard of. Especially when you consider there were whispers his character was supposed to be killed off two movies previously, in Ghost Protocol, with Jeremy Renner’s younger model lined up to replace him. (If that’s true, spare a thought for Renner, who would then have been poised to take over that franchise from Cruise and the Bourne franchise from Matt Damon, neither of which came to pass.)