10 Awesome 2023 Movies That Didn't Deserve To Flop

Now, some might contest that a movie which grosses $567.5 million worldwide can't possibly be considered a flop, but the most recent Mission: Impossible film is something of a special case.

For starters, due to the pandemic severely impacting production, Dead Reckoning Part One's budget ballooned to $291 million, and with the typical rule that blockbusters need to make 2.5x their price tag to be successful, it needed to hit $727.5 million, which it fell far short of.

As many predicted that Tom Cruise's latest stunt-a-thon would be one of the year's most successful films and perhaps even nudge the franchise into billion dollar territory for the first time, for it to not even crack $600 million is a pretty shocking disappointment.

Dead Reckoning Part One may not have hit the highs of predecessor Fallout, but it's still a slick, well-crafted, thoroughly entertaining romp, albeit one that had a number of underestimated factors working against it.

Beyond its bloated budget, it had much of its momentum stifled by the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon, the marketing felt fairly ordinary for the series and gave too much of the marquee stunts away, and of course, the "Part One" designation may have prompted some to wait and watch it at home ahead of Part Two.

To that latter point, recent reports indicate that the film's underperformance has scared Paramount enough that the sequel is ditching the two-part gambit entirely and will be re-titled prior to release.

And because that creates something of an awkward situation for a Part One that'll have no Part Two following it, expect Dead Reckoning Part One to be renamed to merely "Dead Reckoning" in the near-future.