Tom Cruise’s latest mission won’t be hitting theaters until 2025.
Paramount Pictures has delayed the next “Mission: Impossible” by nearly an entire year, from its original date of June 28, 2024 to its new spot on May 23, 2025. Like other films of its size and scale, the eighth “Mission” movie was forced to halt production amid the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike and won’t be completed in time to open next summer. It’s a fate that faces many big-budget tentpoles if the actors union and studios don’t resolve their contract negotiations in the coming weeks.
As part of the move, “A Quiet Place: Day One,” a prequel to 2018’s post-apocalyptic hit, will land on June 28, 2024 instead of its previously scheduled date of March 8, 2024. Meanwhile, an untitled animated “SpongeBob SquarePants” adventure has been postponed from May 23, 2025 to Dec. 19, 2025.
It’s not all delays, delays, delays. Director John Krasinski’s “IF,” a fantasy-comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, Krasinski, Alan Kim and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, has moved up from May 24, 2024 to May 17, 2024. With its current placement, the family film has space from a flurry of Memorial Day offerings, such as “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 arrive on the big screen with a new name. Paramount and Skydance are dropping the second half of its title, formerly “Dead Reckoning Part Two,” though the sequel will directly follow the events of 2023’s “Dead Reckoning Part One.”
Christopher McQuarrie directed the seventh “Mission,” which landed in theaters 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 globally. “Part One” hardly played on Imax screens because 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 is getting a three-week exclusive Imax run.
