Last August, as movie theater owners gathered in Las Vegas for their annual convention CinemaCon, they were treated to behind-the-scenes footage of Tom Cruise doing what Tom Cruise has made a career of doing: risking death and defying the laws of physics to pull off some of the splashiest stunts on the big screen.

In this case, Cruise and "Mission: Impossible 7" director Christopher McQuarrie talked up a sequence that saw the actor drive his motorcycle off a cliff in Norway. "This is far and away the most dangerous thing I've attempted," Cruise admitted, adding, "I wanted to do it since I was a little kid."

But making this childhood dream come true has proved costly, considering this stunt and others like it had to be pulled off in the midst of a globe-rattling pandemic. It has also left Paramount and Skydance Media shouldering a massive budget and an endless stream of unforeseen expenses. "Mission: Impossible 7" cost $290 million to produce, which is tens of millions more than the studio and its financial partner expected to have to shell out, multiple insiders with knowledge of the production told Variety. That eye-popping price tag includes the substantial tax incentives that the global production was able to leverage to rein in costs. In contrast, the most recent film in the series, 2018's "Mission: Impossible — Fallout," cost $190 million to make.