Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 director Christopher McQuarrie suggests that Dead Reckoning may not be Tom Cruise’s sendoff from the franchise after all.
Christopher McQuarrie, director of Mission: Impossible 7 & 8, suggests that Dead Reckoning may not be Tom Cruise’s sendoff from the franchise after all. McQuarrie was brought onboard the Mission: Impossible franchise to perform uncredited rewrites for 2011’s Ghost Protocol, only to later return to direct 2015’s Rogue Nation and 2018’s Fallout, both of which figuratively and literally launched the franchise to new heights. Following Fallout‘s franchise-best box office returns, McQuarrie was brought back again to helm both Mission: Impossible 7 & 8.
Precise plot details for the two movies remain under wraps, other than what can be gleaned from the Mission: Impossible 7 teaser trailer that was released in May to play before Top Gun: Maverick. Other than Cruise, returning franchise stalwarts include Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, and Vanessa Kirby. The seventh Mission: Impossible movie will also introduce a ton of characters, including Hayley Atwell as Ethan Hunt’s new mysterious ally/love interest and Esai Morales as the primary villain. Early in the year, a report indicated that Mission: Impossible 7 & 8, which are officially titled Dead Reckoning Part One and Part Two, are being planned as Cruise’s sendoff from the franchise. However, it appears that may not be true.
During a recent appearance on the Light the Fuse podcast (via Variety), McQuarrie suggests that Cruise may not be leaving the Mission: Impossible franchise after the two Dead Reckoning movies. When asked about the report, the director cautions listeners not to automatically believe everything they read in the trades. Read what McQuarrie said below:
Let me tell you, I’ve been working with Tom Cruise for 15 years and I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been standing next to the man, witnessed an event and then read about it in the trades the next day and none of what they describe is actually true… When you read articles in the trades, just put the imaginary word in front of the headline: ‘The Agenda Is…’ When you read ‘anonymous sources’ or ‘sources close to the production say,’ that’s somebody putting it out there for a specific reason. That’s someone wanting others to think that for a specific reason, and you can never know for sure what those reasons are. You learn to ignore it and laugh at it. In today’s world, you wait 17 minutes and another news cycle will sweep it away.
McQuarrie does not explicitly deny the reports regarding Cruise’s supposed exit from the franchise, though his “don’t believe everything you read” approach is probably as much as he’s allowed to say. In all likelihood, Cruise probably hasn’t made a definitive decision yet about his future in the franchise. McQuarrie and Cruise are currently hard at work filming Mission: Impossible 8, which isn’t scheduled to be released until June 28, 2024, giving Cruise plenty of time to make up his mind about his future.
There is the fact that Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 are titled Dead Reckoning Part One and Part Two and were originally planned to shoot back-to-back, which is a practice typically reserved for the final two installments in a series, recent examples being Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. The return of former IMF director Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) is also a good sign the seventh and eighth films will serve as sendoff for Ethan Hunt and act as a culmination of the entire series. Even if Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 really is the end for Cruise, he will likely continue collaborating with McQuarrie, as the two already have an exciting mystery project in the works.
