Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One director Christopher McQuarrie has revealed that he and star Tom Cruise are developing a brand new, groundbreaking stunt. The pair first collaborated on 2008's Valkyrie, which was co-written by McQuarrie. The next time they worked together was a minor overlap three years later, when McQuarrie performed script revisions on the fifth Mission: Impossible film, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. However slight, this collaboration came at the perfect time for both creators, as it was during the period that Cruise was developing his taste for performing real-life, incredibly dangerous stunts on camera.
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Ghost Protocol is the film where Cruise famously performed a stunt where he ran down the side of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Although they worked together on Jack Reacher and Edge of Tomorrow in the meantime, their most fruitful collaboration yet proved to be 2015's Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, which McQuarrie directed. That film featured Cruise clinging to the side of a plane in midair, a death-defying act that spurred both creators to push themselves even farther on each subsequent project, which includes Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the 2021 megahit Top Gun: Maverick, and the upcoming pair of sequels Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Part Two.
Today on his official Twitter account, McQuarrie responded to a fan question about his collaborations with Tom Cruise. The fan, whose screen name is Amanda Hunt, asked if there are any stunts that he and Tom Cruise want to do but have proven to be impossible to pull off. The Top Gun: Maverick writer's intriguing response was to share a story from the past week, saying that "On Friday morning, I told Tom that the technology to film a specific stunt simply did not exist," going on to say that thanks to their skilled team, "by six o’clock it existed." Check out the original Tweet below:
What Film Could This New Tom Cruise Stunt Appear In?
While this Tweet will certainly pique the interest of Cruise fans, one frustrating element is the fact that McQuarrie didn't reveal exactly what movie the stunt he's describing will appear in. Unless his Tweet is misleading and he's referring to a Friday that happened long ago, it seems unlikely that it will appear in either Dead Reckoning Part One or Two, because principal photography wrapped on those films in September 2021. While it's possible that the stunt could be part of a reshoot, it seems more likely that it will be a part of an upcoming film that both of them are working on.
Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily narrow things down. Cruise and the Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One director are currently collaborating on at least four upcoming films, including a new action franchise, a musical, and a new collaboration with the director of Tropic Thunder. However, while all those are in development, they are actively in production on a collaboration with SpaceX that will be filmed in outer space. Considering how intense the technological necessities would be for that film, it seems most likely that this is the project McQuarrie was referring to in his Tweet.