With the October 10th digital release date for “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” announced this week, some more bits of information about the film’s production have come out and some of it impacts the upcoming ‘Part Two’.
In the recently released Empire spoiler podcast (via Slashfilm), filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie confirmed that due to the fluid nature of the production, there’s a key bit of casting for the second part that hasn’t been announced yet.
He reveals the actor in question was only available to shoot their scenes for ‘Part Two’ over a single month, so all the actors that shared scenes with this actor had to film their parts during this brief scheduling window.
What he does say is that this casting is already in plain sight during one scene in ‘Part One’ and no-one has really caught it yet:
“People still haven’t picked up on it. It’s right there in front of you. You’re so busy truffling for Easter eggs … there’s one right on-screen, right in front of you, and maybe two people have picked up on it. And it’s a f——g casting announcement and it’s in the movie. In the movie, right on-screen!
And the people who did notice it, did not understand its significance. They completely misread the obvious of what it’s saying – it not only tells you this person is coming, but who this person is in the next movie, in one image.”
McQuarrie also confirms it’s not any of the actors previously announced for ‘Part Two’ like Rolf Saxon, Lucy Tulugarjuk, Hannah Waddingham, Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany, and Janet McTeer, or bit part returnees like Mark Gatiss and Charles Parnell.
The podcast is full of information about the film, such as the original opening of ‘Part One’ having Cruise’s Ethan and Alec Baldwin’s Hunley walking alongside a wall which is revealed to be the Berlin Wall. The latter offers counselling to Ethan before the scene is revealed to be a memory Ethan is recalling whilst visiting Hunley’s grave.
Meanwhile UK paper The Times (via Collider) reports that Paramount has reportedly received £57 million ($71 million U.S. dollars) in insurance payout due to the pandemic delaying production on ‘Part One’.
