Mission Impossible : Rogue Nation is a hit

In his fifth outing as Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise has delivered a tremendous boost for Paramount's "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation."

With a $56 million opening weekend, the latest Mission Impossible movie is Tom Cruise's best box office performance in over 10 years giving the franchise another victory, that seemed a tall order just a week ago. Thanks to a mixture of strong reviews and a jaw-dropping stunt involving an Airbus A400M, the film has delivered on expectations.

Paramount made a switch to the release date from December this year as it would have previously clashed with "Star Wars: Episode VII" coming out at Christmas. This gave the next Mission Impossible sequel more breathing room without being engulfed by Disney's powerful marketing engine which will undoubtedly go into full swing late in the fall.

Internationally, "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation" also drew $65m and topped the UK box office with $8.33m over the weekend.

It is the third biggest outing in the franchise's history while the film received an epic 93% on Rotten Tomatoes with near universal praise from critics across the blogosphere.

Written by Drew Pearce and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the latest Mission Impossible outing follows Hunt after the IMF has been disbanded, facing a network of special agents from an organization called the Syndicate obsessed with creating a new world order. The film stars Jeremy Renner, Sean Harris, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Alec Baldwin and Jingchu Zhang.