The summer movie season started with a fizzle as the Tom Cruise spy thriller "Mission: Impossible III" mustered a disappointing $48 million at the box office in the U.S. and Canada over the weekend.
Some independent trackers had predicted the third installment in the popular action franchise would top $70 million.
For its part, distributor Paramount Pictures had hoped the film would reap something between the opening weekends for two other Cruise movies it previously released: "Mission: Impossible II," which grossed $57.8 million in 2000, and last summer's "War of the Worlds," at $64.9 million.
In recent weeks, "Mission: Impossible III" had evolved into something of a referendum on Cruise's continuing appeal as an action star at age 43, his ability to attract women to theaters and whether a year of bad press over his personal life and Scientology beliefs had taken its toll.
It also was seen as a milestone for Paramount Chairman Brad Grey, hired last year to turn the studio around for corporate parent Viacom Inc. Paramount had hoped the movie would provide a big kickoff to the studio's first summer slate bearing Grey's imprint. The film also is considered an important step for writer-director J.J. Abrams, best known for the hit TV shows "Lost" and "Alias," as he seeks to broaden his career into major feature films.
But analysts also pointed Sunday to broader implications for a business trying to sustain a box-office rebound amid competition from other forms of entertainment and new technologies.
"This was seen as a litmus test of whether you can still pack them in at the theaters, and while it didn't flunk, it didn't provide a resoundingly affirmative answer, either," said Harold Vogel of Vogel Capital Management.
Vogel said theater owners would have taken it as "a good omen" for the key summer season, which starts the first weekend of May and lasts through Labor Day weekend, if "Mission: Impossible III" had grossed $60 million or more.
Typically, summer accounts for 40% of annual ticket sales. Last summer, industry grosses totaled $3.6 billion, the lowest since 2001.
Paramount executives said publicly that they were pleased with the opening numbers for the film, calling last year's "Batman Begins" the most apt comparison. That film, which came out eight years after the flop "Batman & Robin" and revived the "Batman" franchise for Warner Bros., grossed $48.7 million in its first weekend and went on to make a solid $205 million.
