"Big Movie. Big Screen. Loved it."
As theaters begin to reopen internationally, Tom Cruise and his Mission: Impossible writer/director Chris McQuarrie decided to show their support for exhibitors yesterday by paying a visit to the Odeon BFI IMAX to check out an advance screening of Christopher Nolan's action/sci-fi epic, Tenet.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros., who Cruise has worked with a number of times including on Edge of Tomorrow and The Last Samurai, was more than happy to accommodate his request to attend a word-of-mouth preview screening of Nolan's latest, which opens in the U.K. today and in the U.S. next weekend.
Oddly enough, Cruise and Nolan - two of the most prolific filmmakers in cinematic history as well as two of the biggest advocators of the theatrical experience - have never worked together, but it's fair to wonder whether Cruise's outward show of support could get the ball rolling on a potential collaboration down the line.
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."
While filming has been halted due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it's slated to start up again within the next week or so and 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.