Tom Cruise’s seventh trip around the world as Ethan Hunt will be called Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
Paramount Pictures unveiled the official title of the tentpole during its presentation Thursday at CinemaCon, the annual trade show for theater owners. Cruise, who is usually a regular at the Las Vegas convention, was absent. In fact, he attended last year’s CinemaCon to talk about the death-defying stunts in Mission: Impossible 7 before the film’s release date was pushed back a year due to COVID-19. What he was looking forward to most was riding a motorcycle off a cliff in Norway, a farce he described as “by far the most dangerous thing I’ve ever attempted”.
He may not have been to Caesars Palace in person, but Cruise played a big part in Paramount’s three-hour presentation. The studio is showing Cruise’s other high-profile production, Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel to the 1986 action-adventure. Thursday’s screening marks the first time a general audience will see the film, which is screened at next month’s Cannes Film Festival will.
Christopher McQuarrie returns to direct Mission: Impossible – 7 after helming the fifth and sixth installments of the franchise – 2015’s Rogue Nation and 2018’s Fallout. The latter became the highest-grossing entry in the long-running series and grossed nearly $800 million at the worldwide box office.
The Mission: Impossible films have grossed over $3.5 billion at the worldwide box office since 1996. The popular spy series hit rock bottom in 2006 with Mission: Impossible III, which grossed just $398 million worldwide. But Cruise successfully revitalized the property with 2011’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” which grossed $695 million worldwide and was the highest-grossing entry until the release of “Fallout.”
In addition to Cruise, who reprises his role as an IMF agent known for occasionally hitting planes and skyscrapers, “MI” veterans Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby and Frederick Schmidt will also return. New to the franchise are Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Esai Morales, Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss and Cary Elwes.
MI7, which has been delayed multiple times during the pandemic, is set to hit theaters on July 14, 2023. A sequel is scheduled for release on June 28, 2024.
optional screen reader