Tom Cruise is encouraging his fans to go see Sinners, and star Michael B. Jordan has thoughts.
On Sunday, Cruise took a break from promoting his upcoming sequel Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning to post on Instagram a photo of himself at a theater holding two tickets for Ryan Coogler‘s genre-defying hit.
“Congratulations Ryan, Michael, and to the entire cast and crew,” Cruise wrote. “Must see in a cinema and stay through the end credits.”
Jordan reacted by sharing the post in his Instagram stories with a mind-blown emoji and a “nah this crazy …”
Sinners is coming off a truly impressive second weekend, defying the odds and remaining No. 1 domestically with $45.7 million — marking one of the smallest week-two drops in history for a movie playing outside of the year-end holidays and erasing early debate over its $90 million budget. The R-rated supernatural thriller has also managed to earn a perfect audience score. The pic has already grossed a huge $163 million globally.
Cruise was previously credited by Steven Spielberg as having saved cinema with his 2022 smash Top Gun: Maverick (“Seriously, Maverick might have saved the entire theatrical industry,” Spielberg said). Since then, Cruise has been an annual summer cinema brand ambassador. In addition to hyping Sinners, the actor also promoted 2023’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and 2024’s Twisters.
Yet the promotion is also savvy for Cruise. Sinners has been dominating moviegoing conversation for two weeks, and tickets for MI:8 went widely on sale Monday morning. Cross-promoting Coogler’s buzzy hit is one way of getting Cruise and the upcoming MI:8 some extra attention (like with this story). Cruise’s last Mission: Impossible film, 2023’s Dead Reckoning, received extremely positive reviews from critics and fans (earning 96 percent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes), but was considered to have mildly underperformed at the box office.
Cruise’s new film is out May 23 and goes head-to-head against Disney’s animated comedy Lilo & Stitch, which is predicted to be a monster. Some are betting that Mission and Stitch could become a Barbenheimer-like phenomena over Memorial Day weekend (though this theory suffers from a lack of catchy name-mesh — FinalStitch? ReckonStitch? StitchPossible?)
As for Sinners, Coogler’s fifth feature is set in 1932 and stars Jordan in dual roles as identical twin entrepreneurs known as Smoke and Stack. Having survived the World War I trenches and Chicago gangland, the brothers return after seven years to their segregated Mississippi Delta hometown, Clarksdale. They are flush with cash and have a truckload of liquor and a plan to open a juke joint. However, they encounter unexpected horrors.
