Tom Cruise's 169-Minute Action Epic Conquers a Major Streaming Milestone

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Hayley Atwell, Tom Cruise, Henry Czerny, 2025. © Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

Published Feb 18, 2026, 2:42 PM EST

Shrishty is a decade-old journalist covering a variety of beats between politics to pop culture, but movies are her first love, which led her to study Film and TV Development at UCLAx. She lives and breathes cinema and sometimes wakes up with the close-up shot of Ryan Gosling's hands playing piano in La La Land, in her head.

She has worked with numerous media outlets, including Burda Media (MSN News), DKODING Media, The Voice of Fashion, Hindustan Times, and more. Throughout her career, she has interviewed an array of people, from CEOs and politicians to filmmakers and farmers.

Tom Cruise was recently awarded an Honorary Oscar for his contribution to cinema. Indeed, the actor has given us some remarkable movies with great rewatch value. His decades of consistent work have given us some cutting-edge action movies, like the Top Gun and Jack Reacher franchises, and, most notably, the Mission: Impossible franchise, which recently wrappedafter 8 movies, each outperforming its predecessor in story, cast, and big action set pieces.

Over the course of two decades, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) evolved from a generic action movie spy to a vulnerable team player who proves extremely lethal when people he loves are threatened, all the while saving the world from different threats. The last two movies in the franchise, Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning, are especially loved by the fans, given it beautifully rounds off Ethan’s and his team’s journey. With a few character deaths that’ll never let fans recover, the final film in the franchise tugged at their hearts.

The Final Reckoning picks up two months after the events of Dead Reckoning. We follow Ethan Hunt on a high-stakes mission to stop a rogue AI, The Entity, from seizing global control. The Christopher McQuarrie-directed feature is considered a gold standard for stunt work and action set pieces, though it runs over 2 hours. The 80 percent Rotten Tomatoes-rated movie was a box office hit, earning $598.8 million worldwide. And now the movie has reached an incredible streaming benchmark. As per FlixPatrol, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has been in the top 10 charts of both Paramount+ and HBO Max for over a month. That’s a mean feat to achieve, to dominate two streaming services at the same time. But that’s a testament to the movie’s mettle and fans’ love and loyalty towards the franchise.

Where Will We See Tom Cruise Next?

Cruise’s next movie will see him teaming up with Alejandro G. Iñárritu on Digger, in which he will share the screen with John Goodman and Riz Ahmed. While other details are scarce, Cruise shared an exciting teaser that revealed the title and garnered fans’ attention worldwide. The movie will reportedly follow the most powerful man in the world, who causes a disaster, then embarks on a mission to rectify it and prove himself humanity's savior. Though all will be revealed when the movie hits theaters later this October.

Meanwhile, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is streaming on Paramount+ and HBO Max. Stay tuned to Collider for more such updates.