According to the latest issue of Empire magazine, filming on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two has halted due to the writers’ strike .
Director Christopher McQuarrie likened the shutdown to a tsunami, yet another in a long list of problems (including Covid) that have hugely delayed the release of films:
He’s unstoppable. Behind every tsunami is another tsunami. We live in a state of constant tsunami alert. That’s what we do.
It is not clear at what point the making of the film is. According to Empire, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two would be 40% complete. Some time ago, Deadline had instead said that the film was already in post-production. The truth probably lies somewhere in between: as revealed by McQuarrie himself, the films in the saga are “living” creatures, in the sense that his and Tom Cruise’s creative approach involves a lot of improvisation on the set. Basically, the protagonist’s action scenes and stunts are planned and executed first, and only later do the two figure out how to fit them into a sensible plot.
This approach, of course, requires that the script be rewritten and integrated on the spot, during production. Something that simply cannot be done with the strike going on.
The official synopsis for Part One
In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team are faced with the most dangerous challenge they have ever faced: find and defuse a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity. With the fate of the world and control of the future hanging in the balance, the team embarks on a frantic mission across the globe to prevent the weapon from falling into the wrong hands. Faced with a mysterious and all-powerful enemy, tormented by dark forces from the past, Ethan will be forced to decide whether to sacrifice everything for this mission, including the lives of those who hold dear.
The cast
The cast includes Tom Cruise , Ving Rhames , Simon Pegg , Rebecca Ferguson , Vanessa Kirby , Pom Klementieff , Hayley Atwell , Shea Whigham , Esai Morales , Mariela Garriga , Henry Czerny , Charles Parnell , Indira Varma , Mark Gatiss and Cary Elwes .
Part II
Also in the cast of Dead Reckoning: Part 2 will be Holt McCallany , Nick Offerman , Janet McTeer and Hannah Weddingham .
Direction and screenplay
After the commercial and critical success of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and Mission: Impossible – Fallout , direction and screenplay were entrusted again to Christopher McQuarrie , who began a collaboration with Tom Cruise since Jack Reacher . He also won the Academy Award with Bryan Singer for the screenplay of The Usual Suspects .
Part One is expected to release on July 12 , while Part Two is expected to arrive on June 28, 2024 . The Italian distribution is handled by Eagle Pictures .