Cue Henry Cavill's shotgun arms! To the surprise of absolutely no one, Mission: Impossible - Fallout absolutely dominated the box office this weekend, exceeding expectations to take in $61.5 million in its first-weekend debut. The numbers are good enough for a franchise high—the film hauled in $6 million more in its opening weekend than Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, which went on to earn a $195,042,377 domestic gross—and the second best opening gross of Tom Cruise's 35-year career, behind only Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds ($64.9 million, not adjusted for inflation).

mission-impossible-fallout-tom-cruise-henry-cavill
Image via Paramount Pictures

To be fair, Cruise, the cast, and director Christopher McQuarrie earned that money, man. Mission: Impossible is the rare franchise that gets better with each movie—Fallout boasts an A on CinemaScore, the best of the six entries—and if Tom Cruise is going to keep breaking his ankle and leaping both out of and off ungodly tall structures for our enjoyment, I predict the audience will keep showing up. (Read our own Matt Goldberg's review here.)

With that said, maybe Meryl Streep should look into learning how to fly a helicopter. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and the Denzel Washington-starring revenge-thriller sequel The Equalizer 2 took home enough at the box office to land in second and third place—$15 million and $14 million, respectively—but those numbers also reflect a major drop off for both films. Mamma Mia! nose-dived by 57.1% from its opening weekend, while The Equalizer 2 slowed to a crawl by 61.1%.

Really, this just wasn't the weekend to not be Tom Cruise dismantling a nuclear bomb on the side of a cliff. Warner Bros. animated entry Teen Titans Go! to the Movies underperformed with a $10, 510, 000 haul in its first weekend, which is world-shattering compared to Hot Summer Nights. The indie from A24 starring rising mega-talent Timothee Chalamet bowed to a $12,166 opening weekend at 12 locations, for a theater average of $1, 014.

But hey, there is still good in these dark and unsure times: Incredibles 2 continued its march toward the $1 billion club, taking home $7.2 million in the states and another $20 million world worldwide in its seventh week in theaters.

Check out the full weekend estimates below, and check back next weekend when we see if the Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon action-comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me can keep the secret agent trend going.

Rank

Title

Weekend

Total

1.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

$61,500,000

$61,500,000

2.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!

$15,000,000

$70,425,525

3.

The Equalizer 2

$14,000,000

$64,231,345

4.

Hotel Transylvania 3

$12,305,000

$119,228,501

5.

Teen Titans Go! to the Movies

$10,510,000

$10,510,000

6.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

$8,400,000

$183,124,127

7.

Incredibles 2

$7,157,000

$572,780,648

8.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

$6,775,000

$397, 555,500

9.

Skyscraper

$5,400,000

$59,152,760

10.

The First Purge

$2,230,000

$65,485,875

 

mission-impossible-fallout-tom-cruise
Image via Paramount Pictures
queen-latifah-the-equalizer
Image via Sony
incredibles-2-bluray-review
Image via Pixar/Disney