I can already tell there’s going to be some desperately hyperbolic marketing when it comes to this movie. I don’t think Tom Cruise can afford to have yet another ‘Mission: Impossible’ underperform at the box office. There’s a lot riding here.
Filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie is telling Empire Magazine that during a recent test screening of “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” a member of the audience almost had a heart attack watching one of the film’s action set-pieces (per GamesRadar).
"We had a small screening and someone said, 'I was suffocating throughout the entire sequence. I almost had a heart attack,' " McQuarrie said. "And I thought, 'I guess we did something right.”
According to the outlet, McQuarrie also said ‘Mission: Impossible 8’ features "the most difficult thing" the production and Cruise have ever filmed in the franchise, though he did not specify whether it was the same scene the unnamed audience member "almost had a heart attack" during.
With an already sky high budget to its name, expect more hyperbole in the coming weeks and months when it comes to this one. It’ll be practically impossible for Paramount to have ‘Mission: Impossible 8’ break even — the budget is almost $400M. The best they can hope for is to exceed the previous high in the franchise; 2018’s “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” earned a franchise-best $791M worldwide.
‘Mission: Impossible 8’ restarted production in March 2024, after the SAG-AFTRA strikes halted shooting on the movie in mid-July 2023. More bad luck then occurred on the film when another delay reportedly happened, this one due to a malfunction while filming with a $25M submarine.
Paramount recently moved “Mission: Impossible 8” from its original June 2024 date to May 23, 2025, delaying it by a full year. A recent THR report stated that the studio, and Cruise, very much want this one to have its world premiere at next May’s Cannes Film Festival.