After a long artistic history of success, Hollywood discovered in the past few days the angry face of star Tom Cruise, who decided to announce his revenge on the policies of theaters publicly, after preferring to show Christopher Nolan's new film on IMAX screens instead of his upcoming film "Mission Impossible 7", which will threaten revenues and affect the audience.
Programming problem
A review of the release dates shows that Mission Impossible 7, the seventh installment in Cruise's Most Popular series, is scheduled to be released on July 14. Since the work is action-action films and in front of modern technologies and scenes of danger and excitement that Cruise resorts to in his films, audiences usually prefer to watch this type of film on the huge IMAX screens to ensure full enjoyment of the experience.
Although Cruise was able to reserve most of the IMAX halls immediately after the release of his film, the work faced a huge problem: Christopher Nolan reserved all IMAX halls starting July 21 as soon as his film "Oppenheimer" was released, which means that Cruise's film will be displaced and moved to regular and less expensive theaters.
Multiple causes anger
The reasons for Tom Cruise's anger varied between moral and artistic and material reasons, on the one hand, he did not like to be with him, and he is the "savior", as Steven Spielberg put it, as his latest film "Top Gun: Maverick" was able to save the entire film industry after the huge downfall it faced due to the Corona pandemic, as it reaped revenues of $ 1.5 billion in 2022.
Believing in his right to dedicate part of the IMAX halls to his film, Cruz began to personally contact the executive theater and studio executives, asking them for solidarity with him and the victory of his film, using the weapon of great revenues made by his previous film, and even asking rival films to abandon some screens in his favor or even postpone their release dates for the benefit of the entire film industry.
Since Nolan's current release date has been set since late July 2021 and Mission Impossible has been postponed several times due to COVID-19, Oppenheimer's producers have had plenty of time to book all the theaters they want.
Mission Impossible 7 vs. Oppenheimer
"Oppenheimer" tells the story of a physicist who leads the Manhattan nuclear project for World War II, leading to the development of the atomic bomb, while "Mission Impossible 7" revolves around agent Ethan Hunt, who embarks on a thriller adventure with his intelligence team to track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the hands of a brute and evil.
Although the two films differ in category and plot – "Oppenheimer" is a drama and Mission Impossible is a top-notch action film, which may suggest that Cruise is more worthy of giant special effects screens – films for summer and holiday screens are usually designed with special techniques to suit IMAX screens, which in turn causes competition to intensify and the number of screens available for each work shrinks.
However, given Nolan's history with IMAX screens, it was only natural that Universal Pictures, the producer of his film, made sure that the largest number of such screens were booked, especially since Nolan's film was shot entirely with large IMAX cameras, a work that its maker is betting on and ranked as the most ambitious project of his career.
This is also consistent with Nolan's previous history as a pioneer in the field, as his film "The Dark Knight" was the first major Hollywood film to include scenes shot with IMAX cameras.
Intense competition
Beyond the crisis of competition for theaters, July and August will see a fierce competition at the box office, as they come in with many of the most anticipated films by audiences this year.
These include the fantasy comedy Barbie, Disney's family drama Haunted Mansion, the animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, the first work produced by Nickelodeon Studios, the sports drama Gran Turismo, and the horror-adventure film Meg 2: The Trench 2: The Trench).