The Mission: Impossible franchise began as a TV series decades ago, but it’s now most well-known as a movie series featuring Tom Cruise. 2023 saw the release of the film franchise’s latest entry, with at least one more on the way. Unfortunately, should Paramount choose to accept it, this finale already has a fairly unacceptable production budget that may doom its box office prospects.

Supposedly, the still-untitled Mission: Impossible 8 has a $400 million budget. This is a massive amount of money to recoup, especially given that the previous movie had its own box-office woes. The only way to potentially avert outright disaster is to officially bring things to an exciting close, regardless of what the franchise’s main star wants to do.

As reported by various news outlets, the eighth Mission: Impossible film has an enormous production budget that may only get bigger as it crawls to its eventual release date. This budget is supposedly $400 million USD, which is absolutely mind-blowing once all is said and done. Such a high budget is something more befitting of James Cameron’s Avatar franchise or something else with extensive CGI.

While the Mission: Impossible series is known for its action sequences and impressive stunts (namely on the part of franchise star Tom Cruise), it’s never been anything like Avatar or even certain Marvel movies. Those movies either use particularly experimental CGI and other special effects, feature large ensemble casts or even both, which explain their immense budgets. Thus, the fact that the next entry in the series is so expensive shows just how out of control the production costs for certain Hollywood films have gotten.

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According to The Hollywood Reporter, a big reason why the movie has become so expensive is due to its constant delays. Mission: Impossible 8 began filming in 2022, but it didn’t complete this initial filming until November 2024. This happened largely due to how the 2023 SAG-AFTRA Strike affected film production, and movies continue to accrue budgetary costs throughout such delays. Similar issues affected the previous film, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, resulting in the movie’s gross budget nearing $300 million USD.

A large part of that was because of various COVID-19 protocols, which isn’t quite the case with the upcoming sequel. Even without these similar issues, however, the 8th film costs an absolute fortune, which doesn’t bode well for the movie making any of this money back.

The Last Mission: Impossible Already Fumbled at the Box Office
Barbenheimer Killed the 7th Mission: Impossible Movie

Released in June 2023, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was a very well-received movie and one of the most popular in the franchise. Fans and critics alike praised the script and the development of the franchise’s beloved characters, with the stunts and action scenes being just as good, if not better, than ever. Given how well the previous movie (Mission: Impossible – Fallout) had been received beforehand, many expected the similar reception towards Dead Reckoning Part One to turn it into an even bigger hit. Sadly, that didn’t happen, and it’s just as unlikely

Given that the general rule of thumb for movies requires films to make at least 2.5 times their production budget in order to become profitable, the 7th Mission: Impossible film needed $547.5 million to reach this goal for its net budget, while the gross budget would require a much larger $727.5 USD to become profitable. The movie made a little bit of money in theaters given the net budget, but it didn’t even come close to the 2.5 multiplier needed for its gross budget. Even if things were optimistic and the net budget was the true budget, the overall amount of profit was fairly minute for such an illustrious franchise.

This made it one of several box office disappointments in 2023, with the movie’s lack of attention being due to a cinematic phenomenon. “Barbenheimer” was the sort of movement that propelled 2023’s Barbie and Oppenheimer to both become major box office hits, with the joke being that the vast differences in scope and tone between the movies made them great counterprogramming to each other. Thus, the aura surrounding Barbie and Oppenheimer completely sucked the air out of the room, resulting in even anticipated blockbusters such as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One being somewhat overlooked.

The general idea is that, despite how well-received the series and its new entry were, they were fairly run-of-the-mill compared to the two biggest movies of summer 2023. This is also despite Tom Cruise having just revitalized his career with the massive success of the previous year’s Top Gun: Maverick. It’s unlikely that something along the lines of Barbenheimer will ever be replicated in theaters in the near future, but given the lack of interest in the most recent Mission: Impossible movie amid otherwise optimal conditions, things aren’t looking too good for the next film in the franchise.

Given the way that things seem to be going, it might be best for the Mission: Impossible movie franchise to end, at least in its current form. The eighth Mission: Impossible movie is supposedly being developed as the last entry, but main star Tom Cruise himself wants to do more. While this appreciation for the franchise is admirable, there’s always the risk of diminishing returns. After all, even the well-received Dead Reckoning Part One wasn’t a major box office hit, and it could signal waning interest in the brand. When talking to The Sydney Morning Herald, Cruise said:

Harrison Ford is a legend, I hope to be still going, I’ve got 20 years to catch up with him. I hope to keep making Mission: Impossible films until I’m his age.

The worst thing that could happen is for the series to continue adding movies as the public moves on, resulting in it becoming something of a box office punchline, regardless of reception. Such was the case with the 2023 movie Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which became a box office flop and largely ignored. That’s the most likely result if the movies keep being made with an aging cast, despite how sprung and spry Tom Cruise might be. At this point, saying goodbye to Ethan Hunt is the best course of action.

Paramount should double down on its plans for Mission: Impossible 8 to be the finale to the story as audiences know it. Ending the current franchise would create a sort of “off ramp” in the event that the studio seeks to continue the franchise years later by way of a hard or soft reboot. Ending the story of Ethan Hunt will offer a satisfying conclusion to the movie franchise that began decades beforehand, which would actually help sell the film. Promoting the next Mission: Impossible as the grand finale is a great way to get audiences on board to flood the theaters and say goodbye to the cast of characters.

In a sense, it would be similar to what Marvel Studios did somewhat with the 2019 film Avengers: Endgame, albeit with a firmer promise of this truly being the end. Keep in mind that, for as well-received as Dead Reckoning Part One was, there wasn’t much hype and excitement afterward for the film. If anything, there was a somewhat muted response that stemmed from the movie’s lack of box office success, and this could arguably dampen the next movie’s release. Telling audiences outright that this is the final movie featuring Cruise as Ethan Hunt will help to overcome this seeming apathy and help create a larger sense of hype.

Said hype is needed to help the movie make money at the box office, let alone become profitable. If the $400 million USD budget is correct, it literally needs to make at least $1 billion USD at the box office to make a profit. No previous film in the series has done this, so it’s a tall order to ask after the performance of the movie’s predecessor. Thus, Paramount will have to pull out all the marketing stops, hopefully without adding too much more to the budget, in order to sell the potential final mission.