Mission Impossible 7 And 8 Director Explains Why He's Developing Two Films At Once

Mission Impossible has two new installments in development right now, a 7th and 8th film, both from director Christopher McQuarrie (who directed Mission Impossible 5 and 6--Rogue Nation and Fallout). With shooting on the 7th (as yet unnamed) film currently postponed, McQuarrie has spoken to the podcast Light the Fuse via Zoom about some of his plans for the next two movies, and The Hollywood Reporter has rounded up the highlights of their chat.

The question of why two films are being planned back-to-back was raised, and McQuarrie said that it's all about the emotional arc of the series' characters. McQuarrie says that going into Fallout, he told star Tom Cruise that he "really want(ed) to make this more of an emotional journey" for his character, Ethan Hunt.

Now, for the next films, McQuarrie wants to go further and focus on the rest of the cast. "I want to take what we learned from Fallout and apply it to every character in the movie," he says. "I just want the movie to have more feeling across the board."

This will presumably include Simon Pegg's Benji, Ving Rhames' Luther, and Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa, all of whom will be returning for the next films. Vanessa Kirby will also return as The White Widow, The Hollywood Reporter confirms, and we've previously learned that Henry Czerny will return as Eugene Kittridge for the first time since the original movie. Hayley Atwell will also join the series as a new character.

McQuarrie says that he and Cruise realized that the film they were planning was "too long," and that after removing about 40 minutes of content--which will go on to form part of Mission Impossible 8's narrative--the movie was in better shape. "The ending of the first movie snapped into place," the director says. "And now I had these two sequences, which means, I've got 40 minutes of Mission: Impossible 8 figured out."

He also touches on the recent news of a Tom Cruise movie where the 57-year-old actor will be filming in space, and says that he has no such plans for Mission Impossible. "What is happening in 7 and 8 is so insane that we don't need to go to space," he said.

The next two Mission Impossible films will release on November 19, 2021 and November 4, 2022.