Director of Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Christopher McQuarrie, said yes to removing Henry Cavill’s troublesome mustache.
The talk regarding Henry Cavill’s now infamous mustache never seems to end. Having grown the mustache for Fallout and then needing to have the facial hair digitally covered (poorly) for Justice League became a symbol of that film’s issues during its reshoots.
However, this could have been avoided as Christopher McQuarrie, director of Fallout, has revealed to Empire that he said yes to allowing the mustache to be removed so Cavill could go and shoot Justice League. Paramount had other ideas, however:
“When the question came – the reshoots for Justice League came out – [Charles] Roven called me, and he said, ‘We need your help and we need to shave Henry [Cavill]’s mustache. We need him to come back and we need to do these reshoots.’ And I said, ‘Look, Chuck, naturally I want to do everything I can to help you, but I also have to think about our production. Let me talk to everybody and figure out what the scheduling would be.’ And I went and spoke to Jake Myers, and the suggestion was made through channels that we shave the mustache and Henry could begin to grow the mustache back and that then there would be – they would give us the resources to digitally fill in Henry’s mustache. Because like it or not, a fake mustache in close-up on a 75mm lens is never going to look like anything but a fake mustache.
“So, we offered the following compromise: Jake Myers calculated the amount of money that it would take to replace the number of shots, and essentially what Jake was able to project was about a $3 million visual effects budget. So, I don’t know how much Henry was in Justice League, I’ve never seen the movie, but I can tell you how much it would’ve cost for Mission: Impossible to digitally add Henry Cavill’s mustache, and we said yes. We said, here’s what we’ll do: give us the $3 million and we’ll shut down, and that will give Henry Cavill the time to grow his mustache back, and we’ll just shut our movie down. …We said we’ll do this, at which point, somebody from Paramount Pictures said, ‘What is going on? What are you people even talking about?’ They’re like, ‘There’s no way we’re going to do that.’ We were just like, ‘Okay.’ That was the best plan that we could come up with.”
You can see why Paramount objected to the seemingly fair plan suggested to solve the issue. Shutting down production for a major blockbuster is never ideal, and to do so over some unwanted facial hair on another movie was obviously not going to fly.
SEE ALSO: Zack Snyder mocks Superman’s CGI moustache removal in Justice League
SEE ALSO: Mission: Impossible – Fallout has no deleted scenes says director Christopher McQuarrie
The best intentions often come back to haunt you. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT finds Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF team (Alec Baldwin, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames) along with some familiar allies (Rebecca Ferguson, Michelle Monaghan) in a race against time after a mission gone wrong. Henry Cavill, Angela Bassett, and Vanessa Kirby also join the dynamic cast with filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie returning to the helm.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout sees Tom Cruise joined by returning stars Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin, Sean Harris and Michelle Monaghan, along with new additions Henry Cavill (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), Sian Brooke (Sherlock), Angela Bassett (American Horror Story) and Vanessa Kirby (The Crown).
Originally published August 2, 2018. Updated November 21, 2019.
