Tom Cruise’s latest mission won’t be released until 2025.
Paramount Pictures has delayed the next Mission: Impossible” by almost a year, from its original date of 28 June 2024 to its new spot on 23 May 2025. Like other films of its size and scale, the eighth Mission film has been forced to halt production amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike and won’t be finished in time for next summer’s release. It’s a fate that many big-budget tentpoles face if the actors’ union and the studios don’t resolve their contract negotiations in the coming weeks.
As part of the move, A Quiet Place: Day One,” a prequel to the 2018 post-apocalyptic hit, will land on 28 June 2024 instead of its previously scheduled date of 8 March 2024. Meanwhile, an untitled animated “SpongeBob SquarePants” adventure has been pushed back from 23 May 2025 to 19 December 2025.
It’s not all delays, delays, delays. John Krasinski’s “IF”, a fantasy comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, Krasinski, Alan Kim and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, has been moved up from 24 May 2024 to 17 May 2024. With its current placement, the family film has space from a slew of Memorial Day offerings such as the Mad Max prequel Furiosa, Garfield and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Of course, the calendar will be fluid as long as major productions remain shut down.
“Mission: Impossible” will return to the big screen under a new name. Paramount and Skydance are dropping the second half of the title, formerly “Dead Reckoning Part Two”, although the sequel will directly follow the events of 2023’s “Dead Reckoning Part One”.
Christopher McQuarrie directed the seventh Mission, which was released just before the global phenomenon of Barbenheimer. Despite positive reviews and goodwill from Cruise’s last blockbuster sensation “Top Gun: Maverick”, the tentpole fell short of box office expectations with $567 million worldwide. “Part One” barely played on Imax screens as Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” dominated the premium format through the end of the summer. That won’t be the case with the next “Mission”, which will have a three-week exclusive Imax run.
