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Tom Cruise at the ”Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" Mexico Red Carpet and Premiere
(Toya Sarno Jordan/Getty Images)
still cruising

Tom Cruise, who turns 63 in July, remains one of Hollywood’s biggest draws

The star’s latest “Mission: Impossible” installment helped boost a record weekend at the Memorial Day box office.

Tom Jones, David Crowther

Last weekend, the US box office had its best Memorial Day on record, helping theater stocks like AMC to soar and Regal Cinemas to shift over 6 million pounds of popcorn

The man at the center of the blockbuster weekend? OK, the man stood next to the blue alien and young Hawaiian girl who were also at the center of the blockbuster weekend? Box office mainstay Tom Cruise

All his own stunts

Not quite as pleasing as “Barbenheimer” but not half as jarring as “Glicked,” “Stitchpossible” — the combination of Disney’s “Lilo and Stitch” live-action remake and Paramount’s eighth installment in the “Mission: Impossible” franchise — looks like it’ll be the next portmanteau gripping global moviegoers, with the films bringing in a whopping $260 million between them at the domestic box office over the long Memorial Day weekend. 

As well as a bumper start and broadly positive reviews behind both films, “Stitchpossible” has another ace up its sleeve in bona fide box office royalty Tom Cruise, who is still, even as he approaches his 63rd birthday, one of the biggest draws in Hollywood.

There’s been much talk about the era of the movie megastar being over; looking at his recent box office hauls, Tom Cruise seems to be an exception that proves the rule. From his earliest features, through to his late 1980s and 90s dominance, and into the franchise-leading, cinema-saving iteration we see before us today, Cruise’s films have grossed a staggering $12 billion at the global box office, per figures from The Numbers.

Still, with the “Mission: Impossible” and “Top Gun” star reportedly looking towards artier, auteur-driven efforts for his next projects — harking back to the days when he fronted films from Stanley Kubrick and Paul Thomas Anderson — maybe even Tom Cruise is done with the idea of the blockbuster movie star.

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The BBC has become the world’s top news website... by collapsing a little less than its competition

Press Gazette just published its annual look at the biggest news sites in the world across all languages; for the most part, it doesn’t make for particularly pretty reading.

The journalism industry publication’s latest update, which is based on estimates provided by Similarweb for May, found that 37 of the world’s 50 most visited news sites saw their reach shrink. Press Gazette highlighted that American outlets have been hit particularly hard by declining Google traffic compared to European counterparts, owing to the platform’s AI features rolling out earlier in the US.

Even the BBC, having climbed the rankings from last year to top the 2026 chart — reportedly in part thanks to Similarweb’s decision to combine the “.co.uk” and “.com” versions of the URL, given that the sites redirect to each other depending on the user’s location — showed a 1.9% decline from last year.

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