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Paramount pushes back Mission: Impossible 7 and 8

Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his IMF team have a new mission: Getting the next two Mission: Impossible films into theaters. However, it’s not going to happen in 2022. Paramount Pictures and Skydance have pushed back the release of Mission: Impossible 7 from September 30th of this year to July 14, 2023. Consequently, Mission: Impossible 8 will now be released on June 28, 2024. It also has the distinction of being the only Hollywood film to have staked a claim to that date in 2024.

Paramount and Skydance released a joint statement that explains why the films have been delayed: “After thoughtful consideration, Paramount Pictures and Skydance have decided to postpone the release dates for Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 in response to delays due to the ongoing pandemic. The new release dates will be July 14, 2023, and June 28, 2024, respectively. We look forward to providing moviegoers with an unparalleled theatrical experience.”

According to Deadline, the seventh movie is currently in post-production. Writer and director Christopher McQuarrie had previously made plans with series star Tom Cruise to film and release both sequels back-to-back. Unfortunately, the ongoing pandemic has significantly slowed down their production, resulting in numerous delays.

The cast of Mission: Impossible - Fallout.

Cruise made his first appearance as IMF Agent Ethan Hunt in the initial Mission: Impossible film in 1996. It’s proven to be a very resilient revival of the television series, with installments directed by Brian De Palma, John Woo, J. J. Abrams, and Brad Bird. McQuarrie has helmed every subsequent movie in the series, starting with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

Although Cruise is 59 years old, he has consistently performed risky practical stunts for the Mission: Impossible films, including hanging on to an airplane as it took off. That’s one of the reasons why making these movies takes so much time and training. By the time Mission: Impossible 7 hits theaters, it will be five years since the previous film, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, was released.

Cruise will be joined by his returning co-stars Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell, Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn, and Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust. Vanessa Kirby will reprise her part from Fallout as arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis, while Henry Czerny is returning to his role as former IMF director Eugene Kittridge for the first time since the initial film in the franchise.

Esai Morales is reportedly portraying Mission: Impossible 7‘s main villain, while Pom Klementieff, Cary Elwes, Shea Whigham, Mark Gatiss, Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Lampros Kalfuntzos, Indira Varma, and Greg Tarzan Davis will have supporting roles in the next sequel. It’s currently unclear which of the new additions will also return for Mission: Impossible 8.

Blair Marnell
Blair Marnell has been an entertainment journalist for over 15 years. His bylines have appeared in Wizard Magazine, Geek…
The best action scenes in the Mission: Impossible movies, ranked
mission impossible movies best action heist scenes ranked fallout halo sequence

Since it first arrived on the big screen in 1996, the Mission: Impossible film franchise has thrilled audiences with increasingly ambitious practical stunts. Star and producer Tom Cruise won’t be satisfied until he’s shown gravity who’s boss once and for all, diving off of increasingly high platforms at increasingly deadly speeds. The daredevil feats have become such essential parts of the Mission: Impossible films and their marketing that one could almost forget the stories that these stunts are meant to service.
In most M: I movies, at least one of those miraculous action set pieces is attached to some sort of heist or caper. Ethan Hunt is a spy, after all, and his quests typically require that he infiltrate a highly secure location and intercept an important item, person, or piece of information. With respect to the remarkable craft put into each of the daredevil actions, how often is the payoff equal to the setup? Is there a correlation between the magnitude of the danger to Tom Cruise and the stakes to Ethan Hunt? On the occasion of Dead Reckoning Part One’s theatrical release, we’re ranking the action scenes in the Mission: Impossible series and our preferences might surprise you.

7. Stealing the Rabbit’s Foot (Mission: Impossible III)
Mission: Impossible III: Daring Leap (HD CLIP)
Mission: Impossible III gets a bit of a bad rap for its efforts to ground the series in something approaching reality, and it can definitely be argued that director J.J. Abrams’ more TV-style aesthetic was an overcorrection from John Woo’s unrestrained bombast. We’ll stand behind M:I-3’s more human and emotional characterization of Ethan Hunt, the romance subplot, and of course, the outstanding performance of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the villain, but we do have to admit that the choice to essentially skip this movie’s main heist sequence is pretty disappointing.
In the second act of M:I-3, Ethan’s wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) has been kidnapped by terrorist Owen Davian (Hoffman), who promises to kill her unless Hunt retrieves the mysterious “Rabbit’s Foot” weapon from a secure facility in Shanghai. Hunt goes rogue and, with the help of his team, plans a daring swing between two skyscrapers, using a third, taller building as a fulcrum.
However, while we see Ethan’s leap and his tricky landing on the roof of the facility, we don’t follow him inside for the rest of the heist. Instead, we remain with his teammates Zhen (Maggie Q) and Gorley (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) as they wait to hear whether or not he’s acquired the Rabbits Foot. We only catch up with Ethan once the mission has gone sideways, and Zhen, Gorley, and trusty tech wizard Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) participate in a wild, shaky-cam car chase away from the building’s facility. It’s a cute subversion of the franchise’s usual structure and it allows the plot to continue at an even clip, but for the purposes of this list, we can’t put it anywhere but dead last.

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Is Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 streaming?
Tom Cruise looks and stares in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

It's been five years since the release of Mission: Impossible - Fallout, but the latest film in the series has finally arrived. Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie have reunited for the new sequel, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, and this is a story that has finally given Ethan Hunt (Cruise) a foe that he can't easily dispatch. The Entity is something that Ethan has never had to contend with before, and it will push him and his team to their limits.

Mission: Impossible regulars Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson are all back as Luther Stickell, Benji Dunn, and Ilsa Faust, respectively. Vanessa Kirby also reprises her role from Fallout as the White Widow, Alanna Mitsopolis. And for the first time since the original Mission: Impossible film in 1996, Henry Czerny has returned as IMF director Eugene Kittridge.

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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1’s ending, explained
Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell turn around in a small car, looking concerned.

Nearly three years ago, director Christopher McQuarrie started filming Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1, and it's been a long journey to get this sequel on the big screen. Franchise star Tom Cruise has been headlining the Mission: Impossible films since 1996 with increasingly risky stunts and over-the-top action that has kept audiences coming back for more. But Dead Reckoning Part 1 takes things to another level with a story that is too big for a single movie.

By most accounts, Dead Reckoning's two-movie adventure will mark the end of Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his time in the Impossible Mission Force. When the ending comes around for Part 1, Ethan's team has been forever changed, and even bigger challenges lie ahead in Part 2. If you need help making sense of it all, then you've come to the right place because we're about to dive in. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to keep reading, preferably after you've already seen Dead Reckoning Part 1.

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