Tom Cruise Leaving ‘Mission: Impossible’ After Next Films? Director Says Most Reports Aren’t True

Ryan Lattanzio

Speculation abounds about whether Tom Cruise will bow out of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise following the release of parts one and two of the “Dead Reckoning” entries. Sources told Variety previously that the “Dead Reckoning — Part 1″ and ‘Dead Reckoning — Part 2” will serve as a kind of “sendoff” for Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, whom he’s been playing since 1996.

But in a recent interview on the “Light the Fuse” podcast, while director Christopher McQuarrie would neither confirm nor refute such speculation, he did have a word of caution: Don’t believe every report you read about Tom Cruise. (Via Variety.)

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“Let me tell you, I’ve been working with Tom Cruise for 15 years and I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been standing next to the man, witnessed an event and then read about it in the trades the next day and none of what they describe is actually true,” McQuarrie said.

Here’s one example: “We were in Birmingham shooting a scene between Tom and Haley [Atwell]. The next day I read an article in the paper that said Tom and four other guests went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant. I read that Tom insisted on sitting at a table not in a private room but in the main restaurant with the other diners and that Tom ordered three orders of chicken masala because he liked it so much.”

McQuarrie said that he called “Tom the next day and said, ‘There’s something weird about this article. It’s 100% factually correct!’ That’s the first time I’ve read an article in which everything happened exactly as written.”

McQuarrie also spoke to another erroneous tidbit floating around reports surrounding the pandemic-delayed double bill: “I read that ‘Mission’ was going to be shot concurrently and then we decided not to do that,” he said. “When you read articles in the trades, just put the imaginary word in front of the headline: ‘The Agenda Is…’ When you read ‘anonymous sources’ or ‘sources close to the production say,’ that’s somebody putting it out there for a specific reason. That’s someone wanting others to think that for a specific reason, and you can never know for sure what those reasons are. You learn to ignore it and laugh at it. In today’s world, you wait 17 minutes, and another news cycle will sweep it away.”

McQuarrie, who directed both entries, said that he’s working on another, even “gnarlier” film with Cruise. “It’s kind of under wraps. It has neither a fuse nor a fuselage. Oh, that’s not true… It does have some fuselages. It’s something we’ve talked about for a really long time. It’s way outside of what you’re used to seeing Tom do. It’s the kind of stuff I really love. It’s a little bit more in my wheelhouse. And yet it takes everything we’ve learned on this journey, which is making movies more and more about emotion and real emotional experiences.”

Paramount will launch “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1” in theaters on July 14, 2023, with “Dead Reckoning Part 2” hitting theaters on June 28, 2024.

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