The Mission: Impossible director has been chatting about future plans for Tom Cruise and himself once their time with the franchise ends.
The brace of Mission: Impossible films that we’re getting in 2023 and 2024 will mark the end of Tom Cruise’s time as Ethan Hunt, lead character of the spectacular action movie franchise. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Part Two will see Cruise leave the series that has sustained the star throughout the most recent stage of his career, which has seen him focus almost fully on blistering action roles.
Interest in what Cruise will do next is naturally high as at the age of 60, he surely can’t keep rolling out action movies in which he performs all of his own stunts and with respect to other ageing action stars, we can’t see him settling for roles in which stunt performers pick up all the slack either. Christopher McQuarrie, the director of the last few Mission: Impossible films and longtime Cruise collaborator has been chatting a little bit about the duo’s plans to work together in the future, telling the Light the Fuse podcast (via The Wrap) that their next project is already decided.
“It’s kind of under wraps. It has neither a fuse nor a fuselage. Oh that’s not true. It does have some fuselages. It’s something we’ve talked about for a really long time. It’s way outside of what you’re used to seeing Tom do. It’s the kind of stuff I really love. It’s a little bit more in my wheelhouse. And yet it takes everything we’ve learned on this journey, which is making movies more and more about emotion and real emotional experiences.”
For Cruise fans who’d like to see him return to more dramatic roles in the latter stages of his career, that comment about their next collaboration being ‘way outside of what you’re used to seeing Tom do’ is an intriguing one, although should Cruise’s space movie (that is set to shoot in actual Space) with Doug Liman still be on the cards, we’d argue he isn’t quite done with crazy stunt shenanigans just yet.
McQuarrie also described the project as “something that is gnarlier” and although we’re presumably going to have to wait quite a while to discover what that might be, you can consider our interest piqued. Any thoughts on what the direction of this planned project might be? Let us know in the comments below.
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