You can’t deny that over the past 25 years, Tom Cruise has been pretty successful at the box office. But, these are austere times and everyone must do their part. So, we come to news today from NYmag.com that Cruise will be taking a hit on the up-front element of his pay deal for the current in-development Mission: Impossible 4. Cruise is currently on show at the cinemas with Cameron Diaz in Knight & Day and although the trailers gave the impression of a fun and action-filled adventure, critics and viewers do not seem to have been especially impressed and it has under-performed at the box office. Box Office Mojo says that the film has made a little over $74m at the US box office, with worldwide receipts said to still be shy of $200m. Hardly abysmal figures, but still way below expectations for a Cruise summer star vehicle.
All of this, coupled with a general feeling among studios that they no longer need to pay huge salaries to big stars, relying instead on either recasting franchises with unknowns, or throwing the budget at 3D technology and CGI sequences, has left Cruise with a very different deal to the one he enjoyed earlier on in the M:I franchise.
Rather than receiving a big sum up front, Cruise will now receive an apparently quite modest front-end payment, with the big money only coming in once the film turns a profit, Cruise then getting a “nice back-end after cash break-even” (according to one insider). The obvious advantage for this sort of arrangement from the point of view of the studios is that they can drastically reduce their production budgets and leave the “star” to take the hit if the film performs badly.
Presumably, Cruise feels confident enough in the project to agree to this re-structuring. Given that the previous entries in the M:I franchise have taken a total of close to $1.4bn at the worldwide box office, that confidence would appear to be well founded. As NyMag.com point out, Jim Carrey took nothing up front for Yes Man in return for a back-end percentage deal and walked of with around $30m as a result. Not a bad pay day.
Mission: Impossible IV will be directed by live-action debutante Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille), with production and story coming from JJ Abrams, the director of the previous instalment. The script is by TV writer Josh Applebaum.
