Tom Cruise opposing 'Oppenheimer' IMAX takeover to avoid same fate as ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ where he lost tens of millions
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: After four successful decades in Hollywood, 2022’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ became the highest-grossing movie of Tom Cruise’s career. With a collection of over $1.4 billion, the project also became the second highest-grossing film of the year. Despite the blockbuster’s record-breaking commercial success, reports revealed that the movie led to Cruise losing millions of dollars due to a complex deal between Paramount and Epix.
Newer reports obtained by Puck News suggested that the actor is now worried over the collections of his upcoming film ‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1', which is set to release amid a competitive summer, a few days ahead of Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ and Greta Gerwig’s fantasy comedy ‘Barbie’. Speculation is rife that the actor is looking to avoid all chances of a similar loss with ‘Mission 7’ as that of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and trying to divert the clash of the movie with ‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘Barbie’.
While ‘Mission 7’ initially booked the majority of IMAX screens for its July 12 premiere, ‘Oppenheimer’ ended up reserving all IMAX screens in North America and other territories for a three-week run following its premiere on July 21. The outlet claimed that Cruise has expressed his frustration over the situation to Paramount executives and had already started making efforts to move the dates of not just Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ but also Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’. The publication alleged that Cruise has been pushing exhibitors to put the seventh ‘Mission: Impossible’ film ahead of Nolan’s project on at least large-format screens after losing three weeks of IMAX exclusivity.
What is the complex deal between Paramount and Epix?
Paramount Pictures, which had the rights to the commercially successful 1986 film ‘Top Gun’, also produced its sequel ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ in 2022, which became an ever bigger commercial success. The film grossed $1.493 billion worldwide and became the second-highest-grossing movie of the year. With the project becoming a big-time blockbuster, Paramount would have experienced skyrocketing success with cable TV and streaming rights after the release of the film on the Paramount+ platform.
However, Paramount’s deal with cable TV network Epix made things complicated for the film studio. Back in 2008, Paramount, Lions Gate Entertainment, and MGM created Epix with the aim of making a competitor of HBO and Starz. As efforts to compete against the giants remained futile, MGM took over Epix in 2017 after buying out partners Paramount and Lions Gate Entertainment for $1.031 billion. As part of the same deal, Paramount was supposed to allow the platform to use their movies for another five years until 2022.
However, when the studio launched its streaming service Paramount+ in 2020, the deal got extended till 2023. The deal allowed Paramount to showcase its own movies on its streaming platform after a short window of 45 days from their theatrical release. While the arrangement did not become an issue in the initial days as Paramount Pictures did not release any top-grossing film in recent years, the situation changed when ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ blew up and became the second-highest-grossing film of 2022.
Shortly after, the parties involved in profit sharing with Paramount became concerned with the film studio’s deal with Epix, as per The Things. The parties reportedly said that the deal ended up undercutting their profits, the outlet reported.
How did Tom Cruise lose money in ‘Top Gun: Maverick?’
Several reports from Tinseltown suggest that some Hollywood celebrities, like actors, directors, and producers, often get healthy cuts from the profits of their films in addition to third-party licenses and digital sales. Cruise is one of the actors who often take home a smaller salary for his movies in order to profit from the box office success of his projects, The Things reported.
The actor reportedly made over $100 million for his role in ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ the majority of it from ticket sales, and was likely to make more profit from streaming and cable TV revenues. However, the deal between Epix and Paramount has allegedly resulted in the latter getting lesser funds from the cable TV company, which resulted in a lesser distribution of the profits among actors and other prominent members of the cast and crew.
When Paramount signed an exclusive deal with Epix for its film rights, Universal Studios signed an exclusive deal with Peacock while Sony Pictures signed one with Netflix. However, Netflix paid Sony Pictures almost double of the amount Epix paid to Paramount. Similarly, Peacock also paid Universal a much larger amount than what Paramount received despite Peacock being Universal’s sibling company. The success of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ made it an extremely valuable film for streaming and cable TV networks, the outlet claimed.
However, Paramount’s agreement with Epix made the deal extremely cheap for the latter and costly for Paramount and its profit-sharing partners, in terms of lost profits, the publication noted. This particular situation likely made Cruise one of the people who allegedly lost tens of millions of profit. Despite the situation, Cruise's lawyers did not file any lawsuit against Paramount over lost profit.