Originally published February 20, 2017. Updated April 15, 2018.
This spring sees Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation director Christopher McQuarrie becoming the first filmmaker to return to the franchise as he reunites with Tom Cruise and Rogue Nation’s Rebecca Ferguson for M:I 6 Mission Impossible.
During an interview with Empire, McQuarrie revealed that production is set to get underway in Paris on April 10th, while he also discussed his approach to the latest instalment of the spy series, stating that he wants to explore the character of Ethan Hunt, as well as delivering the franchise’s signature action set pieces.
“[The film] starts in a very unconventional way. It does not start with action. That was the hardest pitch of this movie. I’ve seen five of these movies and I don’t know who Ethan Hunt is. One movie sort of dealt with his personal life; the other movies are about people speculating what’s really going on in Ethan’s head. I want to know who Ethan is in this movie, I want an emotional journey for this character, and Tom really embraced it. [I said] ‘I don’t want to string together a bunch of action scenes, I want to actually deal with character.’ So I put Ethan in a bunch of complicated moral quandaries, and I’m trying to find ways to connect them – and then, ironically, the way to connect them was through giant action scenes.”
Asked how he can possibly top the plane stunt from the previous instalment, McQuarrie responded: “I don’t know! And I have to find out by April 10th. I may have found something today. I came to Tom with a picture of something and Tom looked at it and said, ‘That’s awesome! I want to fall off of that!’ It’s like, OK, I can see it on a poster, and I can see Tom falling off of it.”
M:I 6 Mission Impossible is set for release on July 27th 2018.
