Impossible 7’ And ‘8’ Shift To Summer 2023, 2024

Paramount and Skydance have announced that Tom Cruise’s next two Mission: Impossible movies will open a bit later than intended. Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible 7 (or whatever they’ll call it) will now open not on September 30, 2022 (which was always a weird date for a global tentpole) but on July 14, 2023. Likewise, Mission: Impossible 8 (which may be the series finale) will open not on July 7, 2023 but June 28, 2024.  

This is more about finishing the movies on schedule (and having enough time to prep and produce the eighth installment) as it is about concerns about the theatrical marketplace. Top Gun: Maverick is still locked for May 27, 2022. Any concerns about a slew of new delays were arguably put to rest with the $33.8 million Fri-Mon debut of Scream last weekend.  

Sony moved Morbius because April 1 was a better date, and because Spider-Man: No Way Home was doing so damn well it didn’t make sense to interrupt its flow. Whether Sony will use the extra two months to throw in a cameo or two is entirely speculation, but I wish something (Liam Neeson’s Blacklight, Channing Tatum’s Dog, etc.) had moved into the January 28 slot.  

Anyway, this leaves Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (September 23) as the preordained biggie of the month, and I’d advise New Line to possibly move Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling (currently on September 23) to the now vacant September 30 slot. This is obviously good news for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse part I as it’ll be that much more “the biggest biggie of the biggies” when it debuts October 7. 

Moving Mission: Impossible 7 to summer 2023 makes sense as it gives Paramount two (hopefully) summer tentpoles next season alongside Transformers: Rise of the Beasts on June 9, 2023. It’ll open a week before Chris Nolan’s Oppenheimer and two weeks prior to Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Mission: Impossible 8 joins WB’s Furiosa (May 24) as the only explicitly dated tentpole for summer 2024.  

While this will make a five-year gap since Mission: Impossible – Fallout (July 30, 2018), the franchise has usually allowed time to pass between installments. Mission: Impossible II opened on Memorial Day weekend 2000, four years almost to the day after Mission: Impossible. Mission: Impossible III opened six years later (May 2006) while Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol debuted in Christmas 2011. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation opened just 3.5 years later, as it responded to Star Wars: The Force Awakens moving from summer to Christmas 2015 by moving *up* five months for a late-July 2015 release.  

Fallout was the first to open in a comparatively “normal” franchise gap, as was supposed to be the case for part VII before Covid arrived. The seventh film has suffered stops and starts due to the obvious challenges with shooting a multi-location, globe-spanning action spectacular, one that prizes itself on (when possible) practical stunts and believe-your-eyes movie magic.   

We’ll see if Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever becomes the next mega-movie to move out of late 2022 due to the sheer Covid-specific challenges of finishing the damn thing. If so, I’d advise Warner Bros. to move The Flash to Christmas and send Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom to the pre-Thanksgiving November slot. However, I think we’ve reached the point where further theatrical delays are about actually making the movie and finishing on time, not about whether enough people will show up when it does open.  

Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible 7 (and, depending on who survives, Mission: Impossible 8) stars Tom Cruise alongside Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Cary Elwes, Indira Varma, Rob Delaney and Charles Parnell. Part 7 opens in summer 2023 while part 8 opens in summer 2024. For those itching for a Cruise fix, Top Gun 2 is still slated for Memorial Day, 22 years after Mission: Impossible 2, 26 years after Mission: Impossible and 36 years after Top Gun.