Almost six years have gone by since Tom Cruise announced that Paramount Pictures had given the greenlight to two more Mission: Impossible movies, with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) and Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) writer/director Christopher McQuarrie returning to the helm. At one point, we thought these movies were going to carry the titles Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two… but Paramount has backtracked from that decision. After Dead Reckoning Part One underwhelmed at the box office when it was released last year, the studio has dropped Part One from the subtitle and has let it be known that the next film, which is still in production, will have a different title. A decision they really should have made before releasing the first half of the story. At least we’re still getting the second half of the story, with the next Mission: Impossible film set to reach theatres on May 23, 2025. And here’s Everything We Know About Mission: Impossible 8, which is officially titled Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
DIRECTOR
As mentioned, both of these new Mission: Impossible movies are being directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who also directed the two films before this duo. McQuarrie is the first director to be at the helm of more than one film in this franchise; previously, Mission: Impossible had been seen as a sort of “director’s showcase” series, where a different director would bring their own style to each individual film. Brian De Palma directed Mission: Impossible (1996), John Woo directed Mission: Impossible II (2000), J.J. Abrams directed Mission: Impossible III (2006), and Brad Bird directed Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011). Then we entered the McQuarrie era, which will make up half of the franchise once The Final Reckoning is released.
STORY
In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen told us of a Russian stealth submarine that was equipped with an AI defense and navigation system called The Entity. The AI system gained sentience and sabotaged the submarine, sinking it to the bottom of the sea somewhere. Now The Entity is loose in the digital world, and our Impossible Missions Force heroes have to stop this mysterious, all powerful enemy. Dead Reckoning ended with IMF agent Ethan Hunt (the role Cruise has been playing throughout this film franchise) getting his hands on the key that will allow him to access the chamber where the world threatening Entity resides on that sunken submarine and destroy it… So in the second film, he and his IMF team embark on a mission to locate the submarine and overcome whatever obstacles McQuarrie and Jendresen throw his way so he can clean up this Entity mess.
CAST
Well, of course, the new film stars Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. For this mission, we’re expecting to see him share the screen with Hayley Atwell, reprising her Dead Reckoning Part One role of thief-turned-IMF-recruit Grace; Vanessa Kirby as arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis, a.k.a. the White Widow, a character who was previously seen in both Fallout and Dead Reckoning; Ving Rhames as IMF agent Luther Stickell, who has been part of this franchise since Mission: Impossible in 1996; Simon Pegg as IMF agent Benji Dunn, who joined the party back in Mission: Impossible III; Henry Czerny as CIA director Eugene Kittridge, who was introduced in Mission: Impossible (1996) and finally made his long-awaited return in Dead Reckoning; Rolf Saxon as William Donloe, a CIA analyst who got in trouble after Ethan Hunt accessed his computer way back in the first Mission: Impossible; Angela Bassett as Erika Sloane, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and more Dead Reckoning reprisals: Esai Morales as the Entity-serving terrorist Gabriel; Pom Klementieff as Gabriel’s former ally Paris; Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis as US Intelligence agents Briggs and Degas; Mariela Garriga as Marie, a mysterious woman from Ethan and Gabriel’s past; Mark Gatiss and Charles Parnell as the heads of the NSA and NRO. There are also a handful of new additions to the franchise: Holt McCallany as Secretary of Defense Bernstein; Nick Offerman as Sydney, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Katy O’Brian, Stephen Oyoung, Tramell Tillman, Janet McTeer, Hannah Waddingham, and Lucy Tulugarjuk in unspecified roles. Waddingham has said that her character is “a ‘powerful woman’ who is ‘quite functional’ in the face of dangerous missions, massive explosions, and death-defying stuntwork.”
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Whigham revealed what he requested from McQuarrie when he was cast in these films: “I said to Christopher McQuarrie: ‘I don’t want a bigger trailer. I don’t want more money. I don’t want better catering. I just want one scene between Tom and I, where you, McQ, write it like The Usual Suspects, and we get a chance to get in there.’ And he delivered.“
In March of 2024, Cruise was spotted on set… and yes, he was running.
FILMING LOCATIONS
Mission: Impossible movies tend to be globe-trotting adventures, and this one is no exception. Filming locations have included Longcross Studios and the Lake District in the UK, Malta, South Africa, and the Arctic region of Norway. We know that Atwell and Tulugarjuk were present for the filming in the Arctic. We also know that Waddingham’s scenes with Cruise were filmed on the USS George H.W. Bush fighter carrier when it was off the coast of the Apulia region of Italy.
TRAILER
The first trailer for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning arrived online in November of 2024, and that’s how we found out what the new title would be. Here it is:
A behind-the-scenes video and image made their way online to preview some of the underwater stunts Cruise performed for this film:
MASSIVE UNDERTAKING
Making two Mission: Impossible movies essentially back-to-back was never going to be a walk in the park, but Dead Reckoning and its follow-up have both hit some rough patches during production. The production team began this adventure at the start of 2020… bad luck, because that was right before the pandemic lockdowns hit and slowed the project down for quite a while. Mission: Impossible 8 / Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning started filming in early 2022, then had to be paused for McQuarrie, Cruise, and their cohorts could do press for Dead Reckoning. That was followed by the Screen Actors Guild strike, which brought filming to a halt for several months. Obviously, Paramount has given both of these films mind-bogglingly long production schedules and have dropped a lot of money into their budgets. Dead Reckoning alone is said to have cost nearly $300 million, but at least they got £57 million from Swiss insurer Chubb to make up for the delay caused by the pandemic.
NOT A SEND-OFF
Early on, it was said that the two-part Dead Reckoning would be a “culmination” of the entire series that would serve as a “send-off” to the Ethan Hunt character. That’s not the case. When he saw 80-year-old Harrison Ford reprising the role of Indiana Jones in Dial of Destiny, 61-year-old Cruise said he hopes to be making Mission: Impossible movies until he reaches Ford’s Dial of Destiny age. McQuarrie has said these films won’t be the end for the franchise, and he and Cruise even already have ideas for what comes next. So if the next film is a success, we can expect to see Ethan Hunt return for more adventures.
And that’s everything we know about Mission: Impossible 8 / Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning at this point. Someday, McQuarrie and Cruise are finally going to finish making this movie, and in May of 2025 we’ll have our chance to see how it has turned out. Will we choose to accept it? Here’s some extra enticement: movie-goers at AMC theatres will have the chance to eat their popcorn out of a bucket that Tom Cruise has helped design!
In the meantime, you can check out a review of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One from our own Chris Bumbray right here, and be sure to let us know what you thought of the film as well.