Jack Reacher box office: Stories about the demise of the superstar’s commercial allure have been greatly exaggerated
Jan. 3 update: Tom Cruise plays the titular all-American drifter-sleuth-vigilante Jack Reacher in the concisely titled Jack Reacher, Paramount Pictures’ film version of the 2005 novel One Shot by Lee Child a.k.a. James (Jim) D. Grant. The Usual Suspects’ Oscar-winning screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie directed and penned the big-screen adaptation.
Things didn’t start out very well for the movie version, as some highly vocal fans of the Jack Reacher books – since 1997, there have been 17 of them (books, not fans) – were irked when it was announced that the 5’7” Cruise would be playing the 6’5” Reacher. (More on this earth-shattering outrage further below.)
Not helping matters were the adult-oriented thriller’s mediocre reviews: 41 percent approval rating and 5.5/10 average among Rotten Tomatoes’ top critics.
Paramount cautiously said it expected Jack Reacher to earn – a highly unimpressive – $12–$15 million at 3,352 North American locations on its debut weekend, Dec. 21–23. This would have been a weak opening for any wide release, but especially for a high concept thriller toplining Tom Cruise – he of blockbusters such as Top Gun, Rain Man, A Few Good Men, The Firm, Jerry Maguire, War of the Worlds, and the Mission: Impossible movies.
New franchise likely not forthcoming
Things began looking a little brighter when early estimates released on opening night (Dec. 21) indicated that Cruise’s latest star vehicle would easily exceed Paramount’s (official) expectations, raking in around $18 million by Sunday evening. Things looked quite a bit dimmer when, as found at boxofficemojo.com, Jack Reacher ended up taking in only $15.2 million.
Things haven’t been looking up since then. This past weekend (Dec. 28–30), Jack Reacher brought in $13.6 million, for a grand total of $44.2 million after ten days.
A total Tom Cruise flop? Well, not so fast.
An unexpected Tom Cruise hit? Definitely not.
After all, there’s no chance Jack Reacher will reach (no bad pun intended) the $100 million mark it the U.S. and Canada. As a consequence, there’s no chance it’ll manage to recover its $60 million budget (not including marketing and distribution expenses) at the domestic box office.
In other words, unless Jack Reacher becomes a major international hit – not an impossibility (more on that further below) – don’t expect it to become the first installment of a new cinematic franchise.
Jack Reacher vs. recent Tom Cruise movies
For comparison’s sake: While taking into account its box office-boosting high-profile sequel status, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the fourth installment in Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise, scored $12.8 million at only 425 locations on its debut weekend in mid-December 2011. MI4 averaged $30,083 per theater.
Perhaps a more adequate comparison, Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie – co-written by Jack Reacher’s director McQuarrie – opened with $21 million right after Christmas Day 2008. Distributed by United Artists, the 75 million budget World War II thriller eventually collected $83.1 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $200.3 million worldwide. Despite its brand-name recognition, Jack Reacher will most likely follow a more modest trajectory.
Comparisons to this year’s box office flop Rock of Ages would be pointless, as it wasn’t a Tom Cruise star vehicle. Anyhow, in all likelihood the only reason Adam Shankman’s critically lambasted musical eventually cumed at $38.2 million domestically was because of people curious to see Cruise as a long-haired rock-and-roller.
Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise. Clearly intended to be the first of a series, screenwriter-director Christopher McQuarrie’s crime drama Jack Reacher may not end up spawning many (any?) more sequels following its tepid domestic debut.
Tom Cruise’s height a box office problem?
Now, complaints about Tom Cruise being too short to play Jack Reacher – and remarks that Cruise’s height would somehow affect Jack Reacher’s box office prospects – are inane at best.
If Tom Cruise would be an inappropriate, box office-unfriendly Jack Reacher because of his height, then how to explain Peter O’Toole (6’3”) playing T.E. Lawrence (5’5”) in David Lean’s multiple Oscar winner Lawrence of Arabia, one of the biggest blockbusters in film history?
How exactly did Taylor Lautner’s height (supposedly 5’10”) interfere with his playing the 6’7” Jacob Black in the various Twilight movies? Would New Moon have broken more box office records each had Lautner been a foot taller?
Coincidentally, the next T.E. Lawrence will reportedly be played by another actor who’s too tall for the role: Lautner’s Twilight Saga costar Robert Pattinson (6’1”).
And let’s not forget that Tom Cruise was widely ridiculed when it was announced he was going to play the lead in Neil Jordan’s 1994 film version of Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire. That Cruise movie ended up grossing $105.3 million (not adjusted for inflation) in North America alone.
International megastar
In the U.S., the Scientologist Tom Cruise is still struggling to restore his image following a barrage of relentlessly mean-spirited attacks in the American media in the last six years or so.
But Scientology or no, 5’7” or 6’7”, Tom Cruise remains a huge star internationally. Rock of Ages – not truly a “Tom Cruise movie” – may have bombed outside North America, but Mission: Impossible III, a relative disappointment in the U.S. and Canada ($134 million), earned $263.8 million internationally.
Also, the Robert Redford-directed Lions for Lambs, despite its political theme, earned three times more internationally ($48.2 million) than in North America ($15 million), while Valkyrie grossed $117.2 million abroad vs. $83.1 million on the domestic front.
There’s more: $185.5 million – or nearly 71 percent – of the worldwide box office gross of Knight and Day came from outside the U.S. and Canada, while the international percentage for Mission: Impossible IV – Ghost Protocol was nearly 70 percent ($485.3 million).
In other words: whatever happens at the domestic box office, expect Christopher McQuarrie’s Jack Reacher movie to perform much better elsewhere, as international moviegoers apparently enjoy watching Tom Cruise in action, whether playing a midget or a giant, and regardless of his religious or philosophical beliefs.
Sturdy legs in domestic market
Spring 2013 update: Jack Reacher eventually cumed at $218.3 million worldwide: $138.3 million international; a better than expected $80.1 million domestic – or a little behind Valkyrie.
The actioner’s top international markets were the United Kingdom/Ireland ($15.2 million), China ($15 million), France ($11.9 million), Japan ($11 million), and Australia ($9 million).
Jack Reacher cast & plot
In addition to Tom Cruise in the title role, Jack Reacher features Rosamund Pike, Nicole Forester, Michael Raymond-James, Jai Courtney, David Oyelowo, Joseph Sikora, Dylan Kussman, David Whalen, veteran filmmaker Werner Herzog (Aguirre the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo), Best Actor Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, 2008) and winner Robert Duvall (Tender Mercies, 1983).
Set in Pittsburgh, Jack Reacher takes off after a sniper kills five people. A former U.S. Army sniper (Joseph Sikora) is accused of the murders, but he swears he’s innocent. Enter part-time vigilante and former Military Police Corps officer Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) to ensure that the man is indeed guilty.
Problems ensue when Reacher discovers there’s a lot more to the story. Rosamund Pike, seen earlier this year as Andromeda in Wrath of the Titans, plays the accused sniper’s defense attorney.
Tom Cruise–Katie Holmes divorce, Scientology, and Jack Reacher
July 2012: Tom Cruise has been much in the news lately because of his impeding divorce from Katie Holmes. Much speculation has been bandied about on whether Cruise’s Scientology beliefs negatively impacted his marriage to Holmes – and, for now at least, it’s only that: speculation from those who want to sell magazines, tabloids, and/or get online hits.
Even Rupert Murdoch got in on the Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes Divorce media sewage, tweeting the following: “Scientology back in news. Very weird cult, but big, big money involved with Tom Cruise either number two or three in hierarchy. Watch Katie Holmes and Scientology story develop. Something creepy, maybe even evil, about these people.”
News Corp.’s Murdoch, of course, should know a thing or two about “creepy” and “evil.” Check out this News of the World report found in The Guardian.
But more interesting than playing a Who’s Creepier game, or whether or not Tom Cruise was caught “blindsided” by Katie Holmes’ divorce action, or whether or not both the marriage (to diffuse Tom Cruise gay rumors) and the divorce had all been pre-arranged is the following:
Tom Cruise – the ever-youthful star of Risky Business, Top Gun, Cocktail, Days of Thunder, and, heck, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – is now 50. The Born on the Fourth of July star reached the mid-century mark on July 3rd.
There’s nothing like the passing of time, encroaching old age, and awareness of one’s own mortality to put things in perspective. At least a little. At least for some people.
Tom Cruise: Megastar for 3 decades
Also worth noting is that divorce proceedings, Scientology beliefs, and persistent gay rumors notwithstanding, Tom Cruise has had the longest megastar movie career ever. Not Harrison Ford, not John Wayne, not Mary Pickford, not Doris Day, not Clark Gable, not Charles Chaplin, not Barbra Streisand, not Clint Eastwood, not Julia Roberts, not Will Smith were/have been continuously at – or very near to – the very top for three decades. Tom Cruise has been and remains in that position.
Those who claim Cruise’s movies don’t make money are either ignorant or just downright dishonest. Mission: Impossible IV earned $693.1 million worldwide. Knight and Day’s worldwide gross was $261.9 million. Valkyrie’s gross was $200.3 million. Mission: Impossible III, which led to a rift between Cruise and abrasive Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, went on to collect $397.9 million around the world. Even the Robert Redford-directed political drama Lions for Lambs, a box office bomb in North America, earned more than three times its domestic gross overseas, eventually cuming at a disappointing – though hardly disastrous for a $35 million production – $63.2 million.
Adam Shankman’s $75 million budget Rock of Ages will definitely be a major box office disappointment – an estimated $47.3 million worldwide after 19 days – but that’s hardly a Tom Cruise Movie. In a supporting role as an aging rocker, Cruise, in fact, stole the notices and could well end up with a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination early next year.
That’s what happened with another box office disappointment featuring Tom Cruise: Paul Thomas Anderson’s $37 million budget Magnolia back in 1999. (Worldwide gross: $48.5 million, or about $75.5 million today.) The ensemble drama earned Cruise his third (and to date last) Oscar nod.
Jack Reacher
Following Rock of Ages’ box office underperformance and the media frenzy surrounding his impending divorce, Tom Cruise will have a chance to “redeem” himself later this year with the Christopher McQuarrie-directed Jack Reacher. In the action film based on a Lee Child novel, Cruise plays a tough criminal investigator unraveling the mystery behind a seemingly clear-cut case. If the film gets positive notices and good word of mouth, media nastiness or no, Cruise will have another global hit to his credit. He has been in that position before.
Jack Reacher, whose domestic trailer was released on the day Cruise turned 50, will hit US theaters on Dec. 21. Internationally, the film will be rolled out in the ensuing weeks.
In the international trailer we see: One man, apparently the accused, explains in the trailer: Jack Reacher “doesn’t care about proof. He doesn’t care about the law. He only cares about what’s right.” Lest audiences think Jack Reacher will be a paean to fascist cops like Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry and myriad facsimiles, Tom Cruise’s Jack R. adds the following character analysis in the trailer: “You think I’m a hero? I’m not a hero. If you’re smart, that scares you. Because I have nothing to lose.” It’s unclear whether the violence that follows is supposed to be exciting or stomach-churning.
Previous Christopher McQuarrie-Tom Cruise collaboration
Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise have previously joined forces in another drama featuring a military figure: McQuarrie co-wrote Valkyrie (2008), in which Cruise portrays World War II German military officer Claus von Stauffenberg. Though only a moderate performer at the domestic box office ($83.1 million), Valkyrie grossed a solid $117.2 million overseas, where Cruise remains very much a megastar.
Other McQuarrie screenplays include The Way of the Gun (2000), which he also directed, and starred Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro; and the much-lambasted The Tourist (2008), with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.
Tom Cruise, for his part, has been in the news because of Adam Shankman’s Rock of Ages, which flopped at the box office but earned the actor mostly rave reviews, and as a result of ex-wife-to-be Katie Holmes’ divorce filing.
“Jack Reacher Box Office” notes
Tom Cruise Jack Reacher images: Karen Ballard | Paramount Pictures.
*Last modified in May 2025.