MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 5 Release Date Set, Don’t Expect It To Stick

If you thought that the summer of 2015 was starting to get over crowded with big-budgeted tentpole pictures from the studio, December is starting to look the same way. Last week it was announced that Star Wars: Episode VII was slated for release on the 18th of that month and now Paramount has decided that one week later, Christmas Day, is the day that they will release Mission: Impossible 5.

Seriously, one week after perhaps the most highly anticipated films of the decade is the time that Paramount believes is a good time to release their film, which will appeal to a segment of Episode VII‘s target demographic. Even if Episode VII turns out to be a bigger artistic and critical failure than The Phantom Menace, it is still going to be the big monster at the box office for the first several weeks of its release. The best Mission: Impossible 5 will be able to do is finish at a distant second its opening weekend. It may hold that place for a couple of weeks, but by being in Star Wars‘s shadow it will never really grow on its own.

What is even more surprising, though, is that Paramount went ahead and did this without consulting Mission: Impossible producer J J Abrams, who just so happens to be directing Episode VII as well. I would think that as a producer, he would want M:I to do as best as it possibly can at the box office, and that would mean getting it out of Star Wars‘s way, even if he wasn’t directing Episode VII. I really don’t expect this date to remain firm.