Tom Cruise has been playing Ethan Hunt for 25 years, and he’s not stopping any time soon. ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ is on the horizon, and HollywoodLife has all the latest news about the movie.
The Mission: Impossible movies have been a theater staple since 1996. After the box office and critical success of Mission: Impossible — Fallout, Mission: Impossible 7 is one of the most highly-anticipated upcoming movies. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the wait for the seventh Mission: Impossible movie is going to be a long one, but Tom Cruise has game-changing plans.
Mission: Impossible 7 will include the franchise’s most dangerous stunts yet. The movie will also be welcoming new cast members like Hayley Atwell, Esai Morales, and more. From the cast to the latest on filming, here’s all the latest Mission: Impossible news you need to know.
‘Mission: Impossible 7’: What We Know So Far
Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8 were announced in 2019 with release dates of July 23, 2021, and August 5, 2022. Mission: Impossible 7 was initially delayed until November 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic before ultimately settling on May 27, 2022, as the final release date. The eighth film is set to be released on July 7, 2023.
Mission: Impossible 7 began filming in 2020 and will include the most dangerous stunt Tom Cruise has ever done onscreen before: a motorcycle ride off the edge of a cliff. He spent months training for the stunt. “If the wind was too strong, it would blow me off the ramp,” he told Empire. “The helicopter [filming the stunt] was a problem because I didn’t want to be hammering down that ramp at top speed and get hit by a stone. Or if I departed in a weird way, we didn’t know what was going to happen with the bike. I had about six seconds once I departed the ramp to pull the chute and I don’t want to get tangled in the bike. If I do, that’s not going to end well.”
Specific plot details are being kept under wraps for now, but we do know about some of the other incredible, jaw-dropping action that will (and will not) be featured. In August 2021, a train was seen heading off a cliff at Stoney Middleton as part of a Mission: Impossible 7 scene, according to Insider.
In 2020, reports swirled that the Mission: Impossible 7 team had planned to destroy a historical bridge in Poland as part of an action sequel. Director Christopher McQuarrie squashed the reports in a statement to Empire. “There was never a plan to blow up a 111-year-old protected monument,” he wrote. The director explained that the M:I team had come up with an action sequence “involving a bridge over a body of water, ideally one that could be partially destroyed.” McQuarrie said Poland was interested in letting production use the non-functioning bridge for this sequence.
He added, “We also had plans to offset any damage the very necessary demolition of the bridge might cause…The people we spoke to were excited by the prospect of our bringing a large film production to Poland and the resources it would inject into the local economy. They were also delighted that we’d be making way for a new bridge that might otherwise not be rebuilt, and might lead the government to revitalize the railroad line.”
McQuarrie claimed the controversy about the bridge was ignited by an unnamed individual who believed “they were owed a job on the production for which we felt they were not adequately qualified.” The individual allegedly harassed crew members privately and publicly on social media and then “misrepresented our intentions” about the bridge.
Mission: Impossible 7 is being filmed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in December 2020, Tom went off on two crew members for standing too close on set and breaking COVID-19 guidelines. “We are the gold standard. They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us,” Tom was heard saying in audio obtained by The Sun. “Because they believe in us and what we’re doing. I’m on the phone with every f**king studio at night, insurance companies, producers and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherf**kers. I don’t ever want to see it again. Ever!”
Tom later defended his rant in an interview with Empire, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I said what I said,” he told the magazine and added, “There was a lot at stake at that point.” He clarified that he was not yelling at the entire crew but “select people” who were not following COVID-19 safety guidelines.
Months later in June 2021, production was paused after an unknown number of positive COVID-19 tests came back. “We have temporarily halted production on Mission: Impossible 7 until June 14th, due to positive coronavirus test results during routine testing. We are following all safety protocols and will continue to monitor the situation,” a spokesperson for Paramount Pictures said in a statement to EW.
Current Cast Of ‘Mission: Impossible 7’
Tom Cruise will be back as Ethan Hunt in his seventh run as the IMF agent. Simon Pegg will also be back as Benji Dunn, alongside Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust, Vanessa Kirby as Alanna Mitsopolis/White Widow, and Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell.
Director Christopher McQuarrie announced in February 2020 that Henry Czerny would be reprising the role of Eugene Kittridge for the first time since 1996’s Mission: Impossible. He will appear in both Mission: Impossible 7 and 8. “There is no escaping the past… #MI7MI8,” Christopher captioned a photo on Instagram of Henry.
Angela Bassett was supposed to return as Erika Sloane, but the COVID-19 pandemic prevented her from reprising the role. “I can’t tease anything about Mission: Impossible 7 except that well, [COVID-19] took me out. Or kept me out,” she told Collider. “Maybe I’ll be able to tease [Mission: Impossible] 8 when that comes out.”
New cast members include Hayley Atwell, who will play Grace. McQuarrie revealed on the Light The Fuse podcast that Grace is a “destructive force of nature.” Hayley also added, “The interesting thing we’re exploring is her resistance to a situation she finds herself in. How she starts off, where she becomes. The journey of what she comes into and what is asked of her and potentially where she ends up.” Pom Klementieff, Indira Varma, Rob Delaney, Cary Elwes, Charles Parnell, and Mark Gatiss have also joined the cast in new roles.
Nicholas Hoult was cast in Mission: Impossible 7 in January 2020. “Say, @nicholashoult, care to raise a little hell?” McQuarrie wrote on Instagram. Nicholas responded, “Love to. Though why stop at a little?” He was expected to play the villain. However, he had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Esai Morales replaced Nicholas in the role, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed in May 2020.
Jeremy Renner, who played William Brandt, in Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation, is not expected to return in Mission: Impossible 7. He turned down a cameo in Mission: Impossible — Fallout, which would have included Brandt sacrificing himself for the team, McQuarrie told Empire. Jeremy has been busy filming the Hawkeye series for Disney+.
‘M:I 7’ Director & Plans For The Franchise
Christoper McQuarrie is writing and directing Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8. He has worked with Tom Cruise a number of times over the years. He directed the actor in films like Jack Reacher, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout. He also helped write other Cruise films like Valkyrie, Edge of Tomorrow, The Mummy, and the upcoming Top Gun: Maverick.
Going into Mission: Impossible 7, McQuarrie wanted to make the film an “emotional” one across the board. “When we went into making Fallout, I said to Tom, ‘I really want to make this more of an emotional journey for [Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt],’” McQuarrie said on the Light the Fuse podcast. “Going into this, I said, ‘I want to take what we learned from Fallout and apply it to every character in the movie. I want everyone to have an emotional arc. … I just want the movie to have more feeling across the board.”
McQuarrie soon realized he had Mission: Impossible 7 all mapped out, but “we had a movie that was two hours, 40 minutes long. And every scene in it was necessary.” He eventually decided to split the seventh movie in the Mission: Impossible franchise into two movies. “The ending of the first movie snapped into place. We knew what the ending was and we knew what the beginning was,” he said. “And now I had these two sequences, which means, I’ve got 40 minutes of Mission: Impossible 8 figured out.” As for Mission: Impossible 9 and beyond, nothing has been confirmed yet.