This has been long overdue, appropriate for the ridiculously long titles of the Mission: Impossible franchise. Today at CinemaCon, the official title of the franchise’s seventh film was revealed to be Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part 1. Anytime you need two colons and that’s still not enough punctuation, it’s too much.
Considering this just the first of two films starring Tom Cruise and directed by his buddy Christopher McQuarrie, we can assume the sequel is Dead Reckoning Part 2? Then again, who knows?
This seventh film has been in the works forever. It was originally due to open in 2021 but has been plagued, perhaps more than any other major production, due to COVID-19. Things have been going on so long that Mission: Impossible 8 is already shooting, albeit delayed when the initial plan was to shoot back-to-back.
So what’s Dead Reckoning about? Who knows? But we knows Cruise’s IMF Agent Ethan Hunt is likely to risk his life climbing or leaping from something either very tall or very fast. A vintage locomotive scene is apparently happening in this one. Cruise, who insists on doing his own stunts much of the time, is probably having a blast putting the insurers in terror.
Returning for the latest mission are Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, and Frederick Schmidt, joined by newcomers Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Esai Morales, Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss, Greg Tarzan Davis, and Cary Elwes.
Yes, I’m drooling at the prospect of a Ferguson/Atwell showdown. If it doesn’t happen I will see this as a massive fail.
Mission: Impossible-Dead Reckoning Part 1 opens July 14th 2023, with M:I 8 arriving a year later on June 28th.
