Mission Impossible Star Didn’t Even Know The Title Of The Movie
It turns out you can star in a huge action movie franchise like Mission Impossible and still not get told some key things.
Sometimes movie production can be a strange thing. Even if you are one of the stars of an upcoming Mission Impossible movie, you might not know the official subtitle until you see the trailer. At least, such was the case for Simon Pegg. Speaking to Collider, Pegg said that he watched the trailer and that was the first time he learned that the film was called Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part I. He elaborated, saying “No, no one told me. So I texted McQ and was like, ‘Dead Reckoning? Were you going to tell us that at some point?’ I heard it was going to be something else, but I like that.”
Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part I will be the seventh film in the Mission Impossible franchise and will be helmed by Christopher McQuarrie. McQuarrie took over the franchise with the fifth film Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and has been directing the franchise ever since. Previous entries were directed by Brad Bird, John Woo, J.J. Abrams, and Brian de Palma, so McQuarrie is the only one who has directed more than one entry. Of course, McQuarrie will also be taking the reins for Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 2, which will be the eighth entry to the franchise.
As always, the upcoming Mission Impossible movies will star Tom Cruise as superspy Ethan Hunt. It will also feature the now 60-year-old actor doing one of the most dangerous stunts of his career – jumping off a cliff on a motorcycle and parachuting down. Previous movies saw Cruise hanging on to the side of an ascending plane and Cruise scaling the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Alongside Cruise and Pegg, the film will see Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, and Vanessa Kirby reprising their roles. Henry Czerny will also be returning to reprise his role from the first film. Newcomers include Hayley Atwell, Frederick Schmidt, Yennis Cheung, Shea Wigham, Esai Morales, Rob Delaney, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss, Cary Elwes, Greg Tarzan Davis, and Pom Klementieff.
While Simon Pegg may not have known the name of the upcoming Mission Impossible movie, at least it’s finally getting released. The movie faced numerous delays due to the pandemic. In fact, we were originally supposed to see the film in July 2021. The eighth film would have come out last week, with the original scheduled release for August 5, 2022. Clearly, this didn’t work out, as we’re now getting Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 1 on July 14, 2023, and Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 2 on June 28, 2024.
Both the seventh and eighth Mission Impossible films will have exclusive theatrical releases thanks to Cruise pushing them to not go straight to streaming. That tactic seemed to work quite well for Cruise’s most recent film, Top Gun: Maverick, which easily became the highest-grossing movie of the year along with being the highest-grossing movie of Tom Cruise’s career. It’s not often that a film can cross that lofty $1 billion worldwide box office threshold, but Top Gun: Maverick soared past it with $1.35 billion globally and $663.5 million domestically. According to Pegg, production for Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 2 is officially underway, so there’s a good chance Cruise and company will have another big winner on their hands next summer.
