‘Mission Impossible 7’ to Resume Shooting in September

Outdoor scenes will be the first ones to be shot for the new installment of the Mission Impossible franchise when it resumes production.

 

Tommy Gormley, first assistant director in the film, told BBC’s Radio 4 morning show the following:

 

We hope to start shooting again in September. We were days from shooting in Venice — we were right at the epicenter when it all kicked off — so we had to shut down in Venice where we were four or five days from shooting.

 

He also added:

 

We hope to visit all the countries we planned to and look to do a big chunk of it back in the UK on the backlot and in the studio, so September through to end April/May is our targets. We are convinced we can do this.

 

Speaking to Variety, Simon Pegg had this to say about the restart of principal photography:

 

That will begin with the outdoor stuff. That feels fairly doable, and obviously there will be precautions put in place.

 

When asked about the logistics of planning action sequences in the midst of a global pandemic, Pegg told the outlet:

 

People that are involved in any close proximity stuff, it will have to be determined that they’re safe to do that. I don’t know what the testing situation is, how that works, or whether they’ll be able to be tested regularly.

 

This comes on the heels of the UK Government giving Matt Reeves’ The Batman and David Yates’ Fantastic Beasts 3 a thumbs up to restart filming over there, as long as they follow the new safety guidelines that will be imposed for the time being. The studio has yet to announce a date to resume principal photography on those movies. This heads up will also affect Disney’s Little Mermaid and Netflix’s The Witcher.

 

I found very interesting the fact that they are planning to shoot until April/May, which would make a total of eight months of principal photography, something very unusual. That is two months on top of what J.J. Abrams took to shoot Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and roughly around the same amount of time that the Russo Brothers took to shoot both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

 

It would also mean that the movie would be wrapping up merely six months before being released, which will most likely force them to be working day and night on visual effects and probably start editing the movie before it wraps filming (a similar situation occurred in The Rise of Skywalker).

 

It was mentioned when both Mission Impossible 7 and Mission Impossible 8 were first announced that those two movies would be shooting back-to-back, so that’s definitely a very real possibility. However, that has not been alluded again either by Variety, Deadline, or Gormley himself. While it’s still probably the case, we can’t be sure that the coronavirus crisis hasn’t affected those plans, and they might just be taking more time because of the restrictions imposed by the virus.

 

We must also remember that this is not the first time a Mission Impossible movie directed by Christopher McQuarrie suffers a major twist in its production schedule. Back in 2017, Tom Cruise broke his ankle when filming an action sequence for Mission Impossible: Fallout, which caused the movie to stop principal photography for six weeks and focus on shooting some second unit stuff. We must also consider that Fallout wrapped filming in February 2018, five months before it was released in theaters. Let’s hope McQuarrie and his team pull another big win once again.

 

Mission Impossible 7 is written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie and will star Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt, Vanessa Kirby as White Widow, Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust, Simon Pegg as Benji Dunn, Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell, and newcomers that include Esai Morales as the villain, Pom Klementieff, Hayley Atwell, and Shea Whigham. It will be released on November 19, 2021 if everything goes as planned.