Paramount officially delays Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8, giving the Tom Cruise action movies new 2022 and 2023 release dates. The Mission: Impossible franchise has been revitalized over the last decade after Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol's release in 2011. Cruise returned as Ethan Hunt for three films during the 2010s and is already locked in to play the exceptional spy two more times in the 2020s.
Mission: Impossible 7 has been filming since last year under the direction of Christopher McQuarrie, who is returning for his third installment. Like every other movie in production in 2020, Mission: Impossible 7 was hit with delays caused by COVID-19. The movie was originally set to hit theaters in July 2021, but Paramount was forced to delay it to later this year due to filming restrictions in Europe. This also resulted in Mission: Impossible 8 being delayed until late 2022. Even though the sequel has managed to continue filming recently, it has now been delayed again.
Paramount has delayed Mission: Impossible 7 to May 27, 2022. The film was previously set to release in theaters on November 19, 2021. The move was done after Paramount pushed Cruise's Top Gun: Maverick to Mission: Impossible 7's previous date. This also pushed Mission: Impossible 8 from August 5, 2022 to July 7, 2023.
The latest delays to Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8 will surely come as disappointing news to fans of the franchise. It will be nearly four years since Mission: Impossible - Fallout's release by the time the next installment arrives. This is slightly longer than the last wait between sequels, but thankfully the wait between the seventh and eighth films is still only a year. As of now, Mission: Impossible 7 is set to open against John Wick: Chapter 4, but the Keanu Reeves sequel could now move to another date to avoid competition with Cruise's action franchise.
Not only do these delays mean it will be longer until we get to see the Mission: Impossible sequels, but this might also signal that more information on the sequels won't come anytime soon. Neither sequel has an official title and that would've changed in the near future, at least for Mission: Impossible 7 if it kept its 2021 release date. This unfortunately also likely indicates that the first trailer Mission: Impossible 7 won't come until late 2021, quite possibly attached to Top Gun: Maverick's new release date. If these next films are on par with recent franchise installments, then at least Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8 should be worth the wait.
Source: Paramount
