Tom Cruise fuming over Oppenheimer’s IMAX deal, according to reports

The great summer blockbuster pile-up of 2023.

Tom Cruise is allegedly pretty annoyed that Cristopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is releasing just a week after his Mission: Impossible 7, taking away a lot of big screens in the process. According to a report in Puck, the 60-year-old film star is worried that his Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One release, on July 12, will lose a lot of IMAX screens to Oppenheimer quickly after its release on July 21. While Cruise's blockbuster will play in IMAX during its first week of release, Oppenheimer will be playing on all IMAX screens in the US for its first three weeks as part of an exclusive deal. On top of all that, the action film also has to deal with the much-anticipated Barbie flick, which releases on the same day as Oppenheimer. This upcoming summer will be ruled by huge blockbuster releases all vying for the attention of audiences. Haunted Mansion, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Meg 2, and Gran Turismo all release within a month of M:I 7. The report also claims that Cruise personally called rival studio executives and exhibitors to try and convince them to drop Oppenheimer on some of their PLF (Premium Live-Format) screens and show M:I 7 instead. We understand why Cruise is frustrated, we would be too if our $300 million blockbuster was put to the side by IMAX just a week after its release. But Christopher Nolan is the poster-boy of the format, shooting his upcoming film entirely with IMAX large-format cameras. Also, Nolan and Universal grabbed the director's usual late July release slot in 2021 - way before Mission: Impossible 7's date was set in early 2022. Despite Cruise's alleged anger, we're sure M:I 7 will do just fine, probably even gaining more box office revenue than Oppenheimer in the long run.

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