Mission: Impossible 8 Gets New Release Date and Title
One mission Ethan Hunt couldn’t accomplish was getting his next movie into theaters on time. The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that the next Mission: Impossible film, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two, will not meet its original release date of June 28, 2024. Instead, it will arrive in theaters on May 23, 2025, almost a year later. This will also place it as the big release on Memorial Day weekend, as the holiday falls on Monday, May 26, 2025. Deadline notes that Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise’s biggest hit of all time, also opened on Memorial Day weekend. But that’s not all: the title of the film is expected to change as well, likely because Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One under-performed.
The change in release date isn’t all that surprising; the actors’ strike is still going, meaning Tom Cruise isn’t allowed to jump off an exploding space station and onto a passing shuttle while a swarm of killer bees tries to sting him to death. Nobody seems to know when the strike will end, but since the Screen Actors’ Guild is warning people not to dress up as movie characters for Halloween (because they’re determined to make themselves as insufferable as possible while demanding the world back them up), it’s probably not going away anytime soon. Other movies are being pushed back as well, like the prequel/spin-off/dead-horse-beating A Quiet Place: Day One, which is now in Mission: Impossible 8’s old slot. But in this case, the extra time might not be a bad thing; while there were several factors contributing to Dead Reckoning’s under-performance, the big one was that it isn’t all that great, and certainly not as good as the last few entries in a franchise that had finally found its footing. Maybe some script retooling will help. It’s going to be difficult, since this is essentially the second half of one big movie, but if they can somehow minimize the AI stuff, streamline the cast, give the villain something interesting to do, and make the plot a little less convoluted, maybe the next one will bring audiences back. Don’t change a thing about Hayley Atwell, though; she’s officially the best thing about this series now.
