Director Christopher McQuarrie shed light on the absence of spin-offs in the Mission: Impossible franchise during a recent interview. While promoting The Final Reckoning, he explained why expanding the series beyond Tom Cruise‘s Ethan Hunt and his IMF team has remained unlikely, despite the franchise’s decades-long success.
Christopher McQuarrie says Mission: Impossible spin-offs won’t work without Ethan Hunt
In an interview with The New York Times, Christopher McQuarrie said the franchise requires a “very specific type of filmmaking” and emphasized that the absence of Ethan Hunt or his team would fundamentally change its identity.
“One of the things I love about [Ethan and his friends] is that they are a team,” McQuarrie said. “They’re all great characters, but if you spin them off, you would lose two things entirely… You’d lose what Ethan Hunt brings to the franchise in terms of its scale and its action, and you’d also lose the team. It would cease to be the ‘Mission’ we know.”
McQuarrie also noted the difficulty of replicating the franchise’s success without Tom Cruise. While he didn’t rule out the possibility of a reboot or reimagining, he said it would not be easy. “That’s not to say somebody couldn’t invent a new Mission: Impossible,” he said. “Having worked on a few of them, I can say, ‘Good luck.’”
The Final Reckoning is the eighth installment in the franchise and continues the story from Dead Reckoning, with Ethan Hunt and his IMF team battling a rogue artificial intelligence known as the Entity. The film includes returning characters such as Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), and new additions like Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Rear Admiral Neely (Hannah Waddingham).
The film has reportedly earned over $450 million worldwide and holds an 80% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While Cruise has hinted it may be his final outing, some cast members believe he may return. Angela Bassett remarked Cruise has “got some more running to do” (via ScreenRant).
Originally reported by Anubhav Chaudhry on ComingSoon.
