Paramount Pictures made a lot of money in the first half of the 1990s by bringing TV characters to bigger screens: The Addams Family and Wayne’s World became massive surprise hits, spawning sequels, imitators, and ample tie-in merchandise. Other studios followed suit with TV-based smashes like The Fugitive and Maverick, and by 1996 Paramount was ready to play perhaps their biggest card yet: a big-budget adaptation of the old spy series Mission: Impossible, starring Tom Cruise, directed by Brian De