After delivering the biggest box office grosses yet for a Mission: Impossible movie with its last installment, Variety is reporting that Christopher McQuarrie is returning to write and direct the next two films in series, which are currently scheduled to shoot back-to-back, similarly to how these last two Avengers films were shot. These next two Mission: Impossible films are set to release a year apart, with the first one coming out in 2021, and the second in 2022. Filming is expected to begin sometime late this year, or more likely, in 2020. McQuarrie has confirmed the news via his Twitter.
Missions: Accepted#MissionImpossible
— Christopher McQuarrie (@chrismcquarrie) January 14, 2019
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.
No word yet on if these two are meant to be 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.
Images: Paramount Pictures
