With a very busy July now coming to a close and the potential of the August doldrums about to hit, this past weekend worked out pretty well with the debut of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. The fifth installment in the franchise brought in a solid $56 million debut (plus another $65 million overseas in 41 markets) to make it one of the strongest starts for a Tom cruise film, a career that certain spans quite a few decades at this point. With a sixth set to go into production next year, the franchise has a bit more life in it to be sure after this weekend.

One franchise that’s not going to go further we suspect is that of Vacation, which had its relaunch this past Tuesday and carried into the weekend with a $15 million take for the three day and $21 for the cume. It’s certainly not on par with with original film and struggles with the others, though it certainly has its moments.

Most everything else is starting to fall off at this point with other films on the market, though Minions is closing in on reaching the $1 billion mark internationally in the next few weeks as it hits China.

Next weekend has the debut of Fantastic Four, The Gift, Ricki and the Flash and Shaun the Sheep. We’re pretty much expecting all of them to do weak business outside of Fantastic Four, but even that I’m hard pressed to believe it’ll hit the $50 million range domestically.