As details begin to emerge on how multiple high-profile productions plan on getting back to work this year, it's been revealed that Tom Cruise and the team behind Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 are currently eyeing a September restart date.
While some were initially hopeful they'd be able to get back to filming in late June, first assistant director Tommy Gormley revealed Paramount's slightly revised plan during an appearance on BBC Radio 4: “We hope to restart in September. We hope to visit all the countries we planned to. We hope to do a big chunk of it back in the U.K. on the backlot and in the studio.”
He seemed pretty confident that they'd be able to complete filming on schedule by April/May 2021 (at least on MI7), barring any unforeseen developments regarding the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and will be more than ready for the film's slated November 19, 2021 release date.
Gormley also added, "This is our challenge. We are not a chamber piece movie. We do spectacle, and that is what people expect of us. If we have the protocols in place and we break down all the procedures very carefully…we will get it going again. Some things are very challenging such as stunt scenes, crowd scenes etc. but we can’t do a ‘Mission Impossible’ movie and not have a fight scene or car scenes in it.”
Later in the day, Simon Pegg, who has played Benji Dunn in the last four installments, reaffirmed Gormley's comments to Variety and added that they're planning on filming the more demanding outdoor sequences first.“That will begin with the outdoor stuff," he said. "That feels fairly doable, and obviously there will be precautions put in place.”
As for the rest of it, Pegg is still a little uncertain about how everything will ultimately go down, but seemed optimistic that the team - and industry as a whole - will have it figured out in the coming weeks, stressing increased testing as being the biggest factor.
“People that are involved in any close proximity stuff, it will have to be determined that they’re safe to do that. I don’t know what the testing situation is, how that works, or whether they’ll be able to be tested regularly.”
Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 are headlined by Tom Cruise (Top Gun: Maverick) as IMF ace Ethan Hunt, as well as fellow returning stars Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible - Fallout) as Ilsa Faust, Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible - Fallout) as Benji Dunn, Ving Rhames (Mission: Impossible - Fallout) as Luther Stickell, and Vanessa Kirby (Mission: Impossible - Fallout) as the White Widow. Newcomers to the storied action franchise include Hayley Atwell (Avengers: Endgame), Pom Klementieff (Avengers: Endgame), Shea Whigham (Joker) and Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: Dark Phoenix), who is rumored to be playing the villain. Henry Czerny (Sharp Objects) has also been confirmed to reprise his role as Eugene Kittridge from the first film.
There isn't much information regarding who else will make up Ethan Hunt's team for his seventh and eighth adventures, but fans still holding out hope that some combination of Jeremy Renner (William Brandt), Angela Bassett (Erica Sloane), Paula Patton (Jane Carter) and/or Maggie Q (Zhen Lei) will also return. There have also been rumblings that the likes of Henry Cavill (August Walker) and Alec Baldwin (Alan Hunley) may also be back in some capacity as McQuarrie recently teased, "Any character, dead or alive, is fair game to return."
Both sequels are expected to film back-to-back, with Mission: Impossible 7 set to light the fuse in theaters on November 19, 2021, while its sequel, Mission: Impossible 8, will open the following fall on November 4, 2022.