Next MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE Installments Delayed

After delivering the biggest box office grosses yet for a Mission: Impossible movie with its last installment, Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie are returning for two more. McQuarrie will write and direct the films, which are being shot back-to-back. The films were initially scheduled for release in 2021 and 2022 But after calendar shuffling due to COVID-19, Paramount has pushed them back a year. Per Deadline, Mission: Impossible 7 will now open on May 27, 2022. Meanwhile, Mission: Impossible 8 will open on July 7, 2023.

Paramount Pictures

The Mission: Impossible series has been one of the few big Hollywood franchises that has continued to improve upon itself with each passing film. While the first two movies, 1996’s Mission: Impossible and 2000’s Mission: Impossible 2 were successes, it was with the third installment, the J.J. Abrams directed MI:3 that the series really found its creative footing, and finally delivered on the premise. Each succeeding sequel since then has been more successful than the last, with the McQuarrie directed Rogue Nation and Fallout being both critical and commercial standouts. It makes total sense that Paramount Pictures would try to keep the McQuarrie/Tom Cruise team intact.

Paramount Pictures

Returning alongside Cruise are Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett and Frederick Schmidt.

No word yet on if these two will serve as the “series finale” for the long running franchise, but if they are, they will have created a franchise that lasted eight films and over twenty-five years, which is a remarkable achievement. Tom Cruise will be sixty years old by the time these sequels wrap up, so it would be the perfect time to hang up his Ethan Hunt character at that point, and hopefully go out on a high note. And we mean a literal high note, as he’ll probably be going out while hanging off the side of a mountain or a skyscraper one last time.

Originally published on January 14, 2019.

The post Next MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE Installments Delayed appeared first on Nerdist.