While it’s not surprising that Paramount CEO Bob Bakish is very bullish about his studio’s next big summer blockbuster, “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning,” the exec didn’t hold back in his hype for the two-part blockbuster, calling it “insane” and raving about the results from audience test screenings.
“The audience lost their mind and it’s still too long. They’re gonna cut it. But the movie is insane. It’s like a complete thrill ride,” Bakish said at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference.
The seventh “Mission: Impossible” film will see Tom Cruise return as IMF agent Ethan Hunt to once again thwart a shadowy organization bent on world domination no matter what the human cost. But this time, his impossible task will bring him face-to-face with someone from his past: Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), the former head of the IMF who was last seen in the first “Mission: Impossible” back in 1996.
“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning” will be riding into theaters off the wave of Cruise’s global hit “Top Gun: Maverick,” the biggest blockbuster hit of last summer with nearly $1.5 billion grossed at the global box office. Its runaway success turned it into Paramount’s second-highest grossing film of all-time behind only “Titanic” and drove the studio’s 2022 box office total to $2.3 billion worldwide, their best year since 2011.
Bakish is confident that fans of “Maverick” and “Mission: Impossible” will be back in droves again for “Dead Reckoning” and teased that Cruise is already working on crazy new stunts for the series’ eighth installment, which is currently filming for release in 2024.
“Tom’s walking on the outside of an airplane — in the air, not on a green screen. It’s quite the ride,” Bakish said.
The film hits theaters on July 14.
