Best films of 2023 — titans from Tár and Napoleon to Tom Cruise

In 2022, Tom Cruise was credited with saving the film industry after the success of Top Gun: Maverick. A year on, his latest outing as rogue agent Ethan Hunt proved a let-down at the box office. More fool the box office, which missed out on the most giddily inventive action blockbuster since the great Mad Max: Fury Road.

https://www.ft.com/content/49189d69-0eee-40e5-b82f-90ab71cc451b

Mission Impossible Director Chris McQuarrie on Stunts, VFX, COVID

July 12, 2023

By Iain Blair

When the first Mission: Impossible film starring Tom Cruise came out in 1996, it began a tradition of bringing on a new A-list director for each movie — Brian De Palma was followed by John Woo, J.J. Abrams and Brad Bird. This changed after Christopher McQuarrie directed 2015’s Rogue Nation. The Oscar winner has been at the MI helm ever since, cementing his and Cruise’s long-standing creative collaboration, which includes Top Gun: Maverick, Edge of Tomorrow, Valkyrie and Jack Reacher.

The pair are back at it with Mission: Impossible C Dead Reckoning Part One, in which Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: to track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands.

As you’d expect, the seventh film in the series is brimming with death-defying stunts, exotic locations and cutting-edge visual effects. Here, McQuarrie talks about the challenges of making the film, dealing with the VFX, and how they created the nail-biting train/bridge sequence. (His answers were edited for length.)

What were the main technical challenges of pulling all this together?

Too many to count. Whether it was COVID protocols and shutdowns, engineering challenges, or being in simultaneous prep, production, post and/or promotion on Top Gun: Maverick and two Mission: Impossible installments — compounded by the standards we set for ourselves from the outset — there were no easy days or shots on this film. None.

How tough was the prep and shoot?

Preproduction happened twice, each time under extreme conditions. The first was a rapidly accelerated prep in late 2019. Top Gun: Maverick had just wrapped, and the studio wanted Mission: Impossible for summer of the following year. In order to make that date, I told them I would have to start scouting immediately, with no time to so much as outline. As such, preproduction, scouting and writing a first draft were all happening simultaneously.

Cut to February of 2020. We were in Venice, Italy — two days away from the start of principal photography — and I was under enormous pressure with a first day of shooting full of unknowns. Add to this the fact that Top Gun Maverick was not finished. We’d been hearing reports of some sort of respiratory virus and the next thing we knew, Venice was ground zero for the pandemic in Europe. With Mission shut down and our crew being evacuated, editor Eddie Hamilton and I set up an editing room in our hotel and went back to work on Maverick, working remotely with the rest of the team in LA.

Over the next few days, the Mission crew pivoted to Rome but was asked to leave for London shortly thereafter. The entire movie business had shut down almost overnight. We set daily Zoom calls and gathered all department heads together, which resulted in a unique level of interdepartmental understanding. It revealed a lot. We essentially reprepped the movie, yet we were not in what you would call actual prep because everyone was isolated at home.

So we had two prep phases, neither of which was in any way conventional or complete. The consequences of this were felt in big ways and small until the delivery of the film. As for the shoot, Mission was one of the first films to resume production in the shadow of COVID. We were in uncharted waters, developing many of the protocols that would eventually evolve into the industry standard. Everything was trial and error, compounded by the fact that we were back in Venice, often working in narrow alleys with a full crew… at night.

The city was largely deserted, and my memories of the shoot there are slightly surreal. It was very hard for people to make the adjustment to a new way of living and working. I realized I had to lead by example. I prefer to direct from right next to the camera, which was no longer an option. I had to work in total physical isolation whenever possible. I took to wearing a communication system called a Bolero [from Riedel] — a Wi-Fi-based radio system with six programmable channels. The advantage of Wi-Fi radio is that conversations are much more like on a phone than a walkie talkie, so it’s very fluid.

In time, I was able to run the entire set with three buttons — one channel to my first AD, another to playback and a third to my script supervisor. I would position myself in a corner, facing outward, with my monitor directly in front of me so no one could gather behind me. Before long, the Bolero became my primary means of communicating. You could operate at a distance yet never have to raise your voice to communicate or deal with the frustrations of conventional radio. No matter where my AD was, we could speak quietly as though we were next to one another — a bit like the team in Mission, actually. It remains our standard means of communication.

Much later, I was contact-traced and forced to work from home, directing over Zoom (reports that I’d been hospitalized were not true). While initially frustrating, I eventually acclimated and realized I had developed a new and powerful tool. When I returned to set, I set up a remote feed to a splinter unit shooting inserts on a separate stage and connected to them via a fourth channel on Bolero. I was able to direct two units at once.

Later still, I was on-location supervising two other splinter units: one at Longcross and another at Pinewood. Eddie Hamilton was connected to set via the same system and could watch and give notes in real time, whether he was cutting at Longcross or in Soho. This is just one example of how an initial compromise to our workflow would eventually become an advantage. Many of these discoveries are still in use — things we might never have discovered without the difficulties of COVID. One of many Mission mottos: Disaster is an opportunity to excel.

Obviously, you had to integrate all the VFX and post into the shoot right away. What was involved?

Visual effects were extremely unconventional on Dead Reckoning. It was initially very difficult to review and approve effects on the big screen simply because we were not able to gather in a screening room together. This slowed things down considerably because I could not confidently approve effects on a small screen.

Because we were shooting over such a long period, with numerous starts and stops, we would often have VFX stand down to keep the budget in check. As such, there was no advantage to such a long production schedule. VFX were slammed right up until the last minute. We finished the last shot the day before the premiere in Rome.

Did you do a lot of previz and postviz?

Only two sequences. Because we’ve shot more than our share of car chases, the only part of the Rome chase that was previsualized was the Spanish Steps, owing to the hugely complex problem of how to destroy the steps without ever physically touching them.

We built three sections of the steps on the Longcross backlot, and they stood there for well over a year. The steps portion of the sequence is comprised of countless specific shots, all of which involved a huge effort regardless of their size or length. The Fiat was incredibly resilient, whereas the big SUV was a diva, breaking down after every other take. The splinter unit would be on the steps occasionally, shooting background players as elements.

The Spanish Steps became an albatross around our necks and something that amounted to an unbelievably elaborate means of getting Hayley [Atwell, who played Grace] and Tom to switch places. I was terrified the punch line was simply too subtle and that all that effort had been for nothing. The first time we screened the film for a test audience, the gag elicited a huge response. I’m still shocked that it works. I evaluate all gags now on this basis: What does it cost versus what does it achieve? It’s not to say I wouldn’t stop myself from doing such an elaborate gag again, but I would certainly be more honest with myself about what I was doing.

As compared to Rome, the train wreck was previsualized extensively. While the physics changed, as they always do when things get real, the basic sequence of events never did. Production in Mission is very fluid, with a great amount of improvisation, experimentation and creative discovery on-set. Yet the train was a massive undertaking that involved enormous resources and engineering.

The sequences had to be both predictable and flexible. This started with a previz involving the broad strokes of the wreck, with the understanding that the actors would be finding performance on the day. The essence of the train sequence is suspense, not action. That means characters struggling through an environment that is working against them. It was the tendency of the previz team to animate the characters rushing through the sets as quickly as possible. It took numerous iterations to convince them to slow things down. The concept of slow action was simply not in their realm of experience.

The earliest previz is dated February 2020. Certain nerds who would speculate on alleged sources of inspiration for the sequence should make note of that date. The train sequence is not inspired by or derived from anything other than the decision to wreck a train simply because Buster Keaton, John Frankenheimer and David Lean all did it in films I greatly admire. I simply wanted to try my hand at it.

The film was cut by your go-to editor, Eddie Hamilton. Was he on the set? How did that relationship work?

Editing was down in Soho, first in offices on Dean Street and later on at Clipstone Street, though Eddie Hamilton would often work remotely in a shipping container on our makeshift backlot. Because of the uptick in streaming production prior to the pandemic, Pinewood, Shepperton and Leavesden were largely unavailable to us, and we had to build soundstages and facilities from the ground up at Longcross.

In late summer of ‘22, we shut down production to focus on a rough cut of the film. Eddie and I took our families on a working vacation for five weeks, moving to an island off the coast of Maine. It was the only real “break” we had during the nearly three years of production. It was also the first time we were ever able to see the bulk of the film at a run.

Our last official day of photography was in April of 2023, just two months before the premiere. Eddie and I were still making small editorial changes while we were in the mix. So as not to change the length of the reels and disrupt the sound team, we made sure all changes fit within the exiting length of the reel down to the frame. While color-timing the film in Dolby Vision, I noticed a flaw in one VFX shot that had escaped us at lower resolution. Thus, the last VFX shot was completed the day before the premiere.

There are some amazing set pieces, like the train/bridge sequence. How was that done? Break it down for us.

For the train itself, it’s probably easiest to break it down into interior and exterior sets, starting with the locomotive. I wanted it to look romantic but also a little mean. Because there was no existing locomotive that we could destroy, we had to build one from scratch. SFX supervisor Neil Corbould and his team built a 70-ton monster locomotive.

The complications of building a working steam engine were incredibly complex and expensive. It was deemed cheaper to build a shell with a diesel engine housed in the coal tender that trails behind the locomotive itself. This created problems later when we discovered that the lack of weight in the front of the train meant there was less tonnage to keep the front wheels pressed down on the track. As a result, the locomotive had a limited top safe speed. The train could go much faster, but it wasn’t safe to do so. This led to endless frustration. The bulk of the train cars are actual working ones that we rented and dressed for the sequence yet had to return intact.

We owned two cars that could be modified and destroyed. We named them Butch and Sundance, one of which was kitted out for stunt rigs and fighting, the other of which was doomed to be dropped off the bridge when the time came to wreck the train. We shot the bulk of Ethan and Gabriel’s fight, along with the majority of the wide establishing shots, on a working railroad in Norway, control of which was given to us for a few weeks. The wreck was shot at a quarry in the UK with the use of a track and partial bridge we built for that purpose. We also built a decoupler rig so that Tom and Hayley could shoot the action of uncoupling the locomotive from the rest of the train practically.

The entire rig was being pushed by a conventional diesel engine and shot from cameras on the rig itself or from a pursuit vehicle driving parallel to the train. We shot that particular action on an unused track in the UK. The section of track that had a usable road beside it for shooting with the pursuit vehicle was only about two miles long, meaning the actors had very little space to shoot the action at speed before we had to reset.

Moving the entire show back to one was incredibly time-consuming. Despite this, we finished the UK portion of the exterior train action (just about everything other than the fight itself) in just four days. The interiors were all shot on the stage or backlot at Longcross. The trains were designed so that interior colors (red, blue, white, sleeper) could be swapped in a matter of days. The baggage and kitchen cars were more particular in their construction, so they couldn’t be refitted. There was only enough space for two train interiors on the stage, so choices had to be made as to what interiors would be used at any given time. Because we were still working out the action inside the train, this made planning very complicated.

Two massive gimbals were built on the Longcross backlot. One gimbal was about 30 feet high and could support a single train car, able to tilt 30 degrees up and down or 15 degrees side to side. The car was designed to be fitted with a blue or white interior as needed. Later, we swapped this out for a kitchen car, which was waiting off to one side. The second gimbal was designed to tilt from level to a full 90 degrees inverted. This had a blue interior only and was designed specifically for the sequence’s climax. A rail system was fixed to the roof of the set, enabling us to attach a camera that could travel with the actors as they climbed or quickly positioned to shoot basic coverage of their stunt work.

Finally, a purpose-built, fixed vertical car was attached to the back of the Spanish Steps set. This is where we shot the bulk of the character work between Tom and Hayley as well as the bits involving the piano before it fell. A splinter unit stayed behind to shoot all the extremely close inserts. Shooting on both vertical sets was extremely slow and particularly challenging for the actors and camera operators. That’s just an overview of the engineering component of the sequence. The shooting and editing of the sequence would fill volumes.

Apart from ILM doing the bulk of the VFX, I noticed in the end credits that you had a lot of vendors, including BlueBolt, Rodeo FX, Lola, SDFX, Yannix, beloFX, Alchemy X, One of Us, Cheap Shot, Atomic Arts, Untold Studios, Blind and Territory. How many shots were there?

There were 2,500. While Mission is almost entirely practical, there is a great deal of VFX work — removing camera rigs and safety gear, etc. The underwater submarine shots are entirely CGI, which was a very big point of concern for me. I am deeply skeptical of purely CGI shots, particularly when they are the opening and closing shots of the film.

Special effects supervisor Alex Wuttke assured me it could be made to work, and I was satisfied with the end result. The shot above the ice at the end of the film is practical, captured when we filmed the Arctic portions of Dead Reckoning Part Two in March of ’23, just a few months before completion of Part One.

What was the most difficult VFX sequence/shot to do and why? Was it Tom’s motorcycle jump off a mountain top?

With over 2,500 shots, many of which were extremely ambitious, it’s hard to pick just one. The motorcycle jump, despite being shot on the first day of principal photography, was one of the very last shots to make final. The shot in the trailer is not the finished product.

The nature of the camera move and the fact that the ramp had to be smooth, yet the terrain had to feel natural, made for an insane number of frame-by-frame complications — compounded by our insistence that Tom himself never be in any way manipulated. No digital doubling was permitted.

The shape of the ramp was a challenge as well. Most versions were difficult to perceive in the wide establishing shots. We finally settled on the asymmetrical ridge in the final film for this reason — it allowed us to add a directional shadow for perspective. Despite countless iterations, there were still a few frames that I was not satisfied with — a judder in the original plate caused by the intersection of a lateral camera move just as Tom hits the upward slope of the ramp. Finally, Eddie and I added a simulated camera bobble — as if the camera-ship encountered turbulence. Just a tiny, barely perceptible 22-frame bump to hide this unfixable anomaly. Unless I point it out, you can’t see it.

I haven’t even gone into the countless graphics shot in the film, all of which are precisely honed down to the millisecond, conveying non stop story that has to be conveyed in shots often as short as 13 frames. They all have to work in a way that requires no effort from the audience. I drove the graphics people crazy, but their work speaks for itself. And there was, of course, the Entity itself, which went through several iterations before we settled on just the right design, behavior, color and sound. It really didn’t take its final form until shortly before we delivered picture.

What about the importance of music and sound to you as a filmmaker?

Both are vital. More important than dialogue. I’ve seen music alone increase a test score by 20 points. I consider the final mix to be a full third of the movie’s emotional impact, along with character and cinematography. I also don’t trust my ears. I have hearing loss and cannot perceive certain sounds as acutely as my team. This is why my mixes are the way they are. It’s not enough for me to hear it. I have to feel it.

Where did you do the DI, and who was the colorist?

The colorist was Asa Shoul, and we did it at Warner Bros. De Lane Lea in Soho. We’ve worked with Asa many times and have a good shorthand with him. Scenes like the Committee meeting and the safe house were hardest, as those environments are essentially expressly lit boxes filled with exposition.

Asa found a great texture for both. And a grain pass was essential. Dolby Vision has extremely rich color and the deepest of deep blacks, which is great. What proved to be a problem was white. The heavy use of source light and back lights in Venice made for extremely high contrast between light and dark in many shots. The backlight was simply overpowering — like staring into the actual source. I’d never seen anything quite like it. Going through every shot would have been extremely time-consuming.

Asa managed to create a universal pass to decrease the high end of the white spectrum in those sequences, which brought the intensity under control. When you watch the scene in the safe house after the Venice foot chase, you can note the occasional cut where the shift from light to dark is quite impactful. Keeping in mind that these have been pulled back, you can get a sense of how jarring some of the cuts in Venice would have been before we toned it down.

Did the film turn out the way you hoped it would?

There are things in the film of which I am immensely proud — particularly the performances of the extraordinary cast. And I am in awe of our incredible crew. The adversity they faced over such an extended period of time is unprecedented. They are simply the best in the business. That said, every film ultimately leaves me feeling the same way: I can do better.

https://postperspective.com/mission-impossible-director-chris-mcquarrie-on-stunts-vfx-covid/

The Real Mission Impossible: Saying “No” to Tom Cruise

How the franchise superstar lawyered-up and out-gunned Paramount execs over costs, COVID and a last-minute submarine.

By Kim Masters

Plus Icon

March 24, 2022

Investors who heard Tom Cruise speak via video at Paramount‘s Feb. 15 investors’ event must have come away thinking his relationship with the company was all harmony. Calling Shari Redstone his “dear friend,” he lavished praise on the studio and noted his “over 37-year relationship with Paramount that I’m very proud of and very grateful for.”

The audience would never suspect that the infuriated star had lawyered up a year earlier when the studio notified him that Mission: Impossible 7 would have a 45-day theatrical window — far shorter than his usual three-month run — before streaming on Paramount+. It’s a fight that remains unresolved as the parties agreed to postpone the battle until the film is finished, which it isn’t. Cruise has balked at getting it done until he’s put a great deal of M:I 8 in the can.

That wasn’t the only point of friction. As Paramount flailed for material to pump up its fledgling streaming service, would Cruise allow his longtime studio home to develop a Days of Thunder series for the streamer? That idea was strangled in its cradle. The idea of developing a Mission: Impossible series was no-go, too, even though the property had begun life in the 1960s as a CBS show.

M:I 7‘s release date has been pushed four times; it’s now set for July 2023. By holding on to the film as a work in progress while working on the eighth, Cruise and his writer-director, Christopher McQuarrie, ensure that Paramount won’t have much luck imposing budget restrictions on what is allegedly the final installment in the franchise. It also gives Cruise — who has creative control — flexibility with respect to the cliffhanger ending of M:I 7.

With hundreds of millions on the line, says a knowledgeable source, Cruise and McQuarrie take a perhaps surprisingly improvisational approach to filmmaking. McQuarrie first encountered Cruise on the 2008 film Valkyrie, which McQuarrie co-wrote and co-produced. He started collaborating on the Mission movies when he went to work on the script for the fourth installment, 2011’s Ghost Protocol, mid-production. He directed the fifth, 2015’s Rogue Nation, during which he figured out the third act only in the middle of shooting. The sixth installment, 2018’s Fallout, involved more of the same budget-fracturing spontaneity. This unpredictable approach is Cruise exercising the power he’s accrued from bringing in $3.6 billion in box office starring as Ethan Hunt over three decades.

The notion that a studio can control spending on a Cruise movie is dismissed by executives who have been in the trenches with him. One says a studio can only hope to “influence” Cruise and McQuarrie. “Tom looks at [the money] he delivers to the studio,” says another. “Why wouldn’t you go do whatever you want? Who’s going to tell you not to?” These executives say Cruise is driven by his own perfectionism. “It’s not always in the best interest of the budget, but he is incredibly detailed and willing to put in an enormous amount of time and effort on every aspect,” says a source on M:I 7. “The guy does give every ounce of his being to this endeavor,” confirms another.

The still-unfinished M:I 7 has already hit a breathtaking $290 million budget, with tax incentives. Cruise and McQuarrie did a little work on 8 as 7 got underway — enough to say they had started the film — but shooting on 8 is underway now. Sources say Cruise has persuaded Brian Robbins, the new president and CEO of Paramount Pictures, to give him more money to finish the seventh film and make the eighth, arguing (with some justification) that inflation has driven up expenses.

No one can be blamed for COVID-19, or for the lousy luck that had M:I 7 start its shoot in northern Italy, hit hard early in the pandemic. Ultimately, both Cruise and McQuarrie — neither of whom was believed to be vaccinated at the time — contracted the virus, according to sources. McQuarrie’s illness was so severe that he was hospitalized in London, a source says. (Why the two weren’t vaccinated isn’t clear, but in Cruise’s case, it apparently was not because Scientology has taken a position against it, as some in town have speculated. Sources familiar with the organization’s policy say it has left the decision up to members.) Neither Cruise nor McQuarrie responded to a request for comment.

The decision to make the films was set in 2018, when Paramount Pictures’ then-CEO Jim Gianopulos and his team flew to London to hear a pitch for the two installments. Everyone in the meeting would have known that Gianopulos had to say yes. Paramount’s cupboard was bare. The Transformers films had stalled; the 2017 installment, The Last Knight, had gone well over budget and would lose $100 million, according to a knowledgeable source. The studio had no other surefire franchises.

But the Mission: Impossible series was stronger than it had ever been.

In 2006, Cruise hit a low with the $398 million gross of Mission: Impossible III, after he dinged his reputation with his appearances on Oprah and the Today show. But he had repaired his relationship with his fans, and Fallout was the highest-grossing movie of the series, the 2018 release pulling in $791.6 million worldwide — more than $100 million higher than the previous entry. “You would make [Mission: Impossible] 7 and 8 even if you had a full slate,” a studio veteran points out. “They weren’t crazy expensive by the standards of Marvel, of Bond.” The sixth film had cost about $180 million with rebates, but the relentless drive for bigger stunts and more locations kept pushing up the cost of the films.

At the pitch in London, there was a treatment but no scripts. “The hardest part of running a studio is your desperate need for tentpoles,” says an executive who has managed a previous Cruise film. “If you don’t have a locked script, it’s impossible to pencil [the budget] out.”

As anyone who has heard a Cruise pitch will tell you, the star is very hard to resist. “He is the consummate salesman,” says an executive who has experienced Cruise’s powers of persuasion. “His ability to charm people and his enthusiasm are completely genuine.” McQuarrie was just as compelling. In January 2019, Cruise announced the next two installments, with the first to be released in July 2021 and the second in August 2022.

Then M:I 7 became one of the first major productions to run headlong into the pandemic. On Feb. 24, 2020, just days before filming was to begin in Venice, Paramount announced that it was shutting down the production “out of an abundance of caution.” According to a source, Cruise was then still in London, stricken with an illness that was not believed to be COVID-19.

The production moved to Rome, only to stop again March 9, when the Italian government locked down the country. Cast and crew resumed work in July after British authorities gave the production special dispensation to skip a mandatory 14-day quarantine. After Cruise called the country’s minister of culture, Norway also gave permission to shoot without observing the country’s 10-day quarantine requirement. (The British tabloid The Sun reported that Cruise paid $676,000 for a cruise ship so cast and crew could isolate.) Back in Italy in October 2020, the film shut down for a third time after a dozen people on set tested positive for the coronavirus. According to a source, one of Cruise’s security guards had a gathering in his hotel room that also led to some cases. The production moved to Venice, only to be shut down for the fourth time because of positive tests.

In December 2020, with the production shooting outside London, The Sun got hold of an audiotape of Cruise dressing down the crew, supposedly after he saw a couple of people standing too close together. Framing the production as a model for the industry, he said, “I’m on the phone with every ****ing studio at night, insurance companies, producers, and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs, you mother****ers!” He added, “If I see you do it again, you’re ****ing gone!” The overall public reaction seemed supportive, with an article in The Atlantic calling it “cathartic, even comforting” to hear Cruise call for safety.

After that, Jake Myers, credited as an executive producer on Rogue Nation in 2015 and a producer on Fallout in 2018, left the production. He had been set to remain with the franchise through the final film. A source says he was taking the blame for lax protocols. Myers did not respond to requests for comment.

On Feb. 14, 2021, McQuarrie posted on Instagram that the production just needed a few “finishing touches” (which it still awaits). Meanwhile, in response to a COVID-19 surge in the U.K., the shoot shut down for the fifth time.

***

Early in 2021, in the midst of these struggles, Gianopulos informed Cruise that the film would receive a 45-day theatrical window before moving to Paramount+. The studio had to know how unwelcome this news would be.

Says an associate, “Jim was bridging between what [Paramount’s] Shari [Redstone] and [president and CEO] Bob [Bakish] wanted and what Jim felt was the right thing to do,” which was to protect the relationship with Cruise. “Part of the reason [Jim] is gone is that Shari and Bob thought they could wave a magic wand” and persuade the star to accept the shortened window.

Sure enough, Cruise was having none of it. Seeing himself rightly as Paramount’s most important, not to mention longest-term, partner, he was said to be furious. He had no intention that any of his movies would play for a day less than his standard three-month run. “For him, 45 days is like going day-and-date,” says a Paramount source. He also felt that setting a date when the movie could be seen on the service would discourage people from going to the theater.

Cruise is one of the last dollar-one gross players in the business, so box office receipts are key to his compensation. (He makes much more from the films than the studio does.) A source says Gianopulos had relied on the advice of Paramount Pictures COO Andrew Gumpert that the studio had the power to shrink M:I 7‘s theatrical window. (Paramount declined to comment.) But language in Cruise’s contract said the movie had to be handled in a manner consistent with the previous film. Cruise called his lawyers.

For Gianopulos, who tended his talent relationships as carefully as anyone in the business, this kind of breach was undoubtedly deeply upsetting. He had so few key relationships to protect at Paramount and had already fought to hold A Quiet Place Part II for theatrical release to avoid a clash with John Krasinski. A source says Gianopulos tried to use data to show Cruise that the industry had changed and most of the film’s box office revenue would be generated in the first 45 days. “That was not an easy thing for Jim to have to do,” this insider says. “Tom is so committed to theatrical.” The two sides agreed to postpone the argument.

Meanwhile, the production continued to battle delays. It shut down after shooting in Abu Dhabi when the British government required a 10-day quarantine for the returning cast and crew. It shut down for a seventh time in early June 2021, when 14 people tested positive. The outbreak was blamed on dancers who were shooting a nightclub scene and were close to the star. Sources say some of Cruise’s family members that were with him on the production were stricken, and then Cruise and McQuarrie.

Paramount had a $100 million insurance policy and maintains that Federal Insurance Company must pay for the added costs of moving locations to dodge the virus, dealing with multiple shutdowns, and incurring the extra expense of complying with COVID-19 protocols. The insurer paid $5 million for losses incurred due to an unspecified castmember’s February 2020 illness at the outset of the shoot — presumably Cruise’s indisposition that was not COVID. The insurer declined to pay for most of the other expenses incurred, prompting Paramount to sue. The case is pending.

For weeks in the summer of 2021, rumors had started to circulate in Hollywood that Gianopulos would be replaced by Brian Robbins, the head of Nickelodeon and chief content officer of kids and family for Paramount+. Robbins had a digital background and was believed to have won Redstone over with his plan to devote himself to building the streaming service with relatively inexpensive fare. Gianopulos, thinking his position was secure, went to London in September to negotiate with Cruise and McQuarrie, who had made a late decision to throw a submarine sequence into M:I 7. The submarine was already set to appear in 8, and adding it to 7 would, of course, contribute to cost overruns on that film. Sources say Gianopulos wanted to close out the budget on 7 and he wanted a script for 8, which would be key to making at least an attempt to control the budget.

While Gianopulos was trying to work out those points, Paramount announced that he was being replaced by Robbins. Though not entirely unexpected, the news rattled Hollywood veterans, who were watching the industry undergo rapid transformation and wondered whether Paramount would even be a movie studio anymore. A knowledgeable source says Bakish told Gianopulos the studio would be downsized and steer away from big movies, instead focusing on franchises like Robbins’ PAW Patrol, which had generated a movie that streamed on Paramount+ the same day it opened in theaters with no pushback from the animated characters. (The film made $144 million at the box office.)

According to this source, Bakish told Gianopulos, “It’s going to be a very different studio going forward, like nothing you’ve ever run before.” A Paramount insider says Bakish conveyed “that going forward the studio was going to be much more closely integrated with the company.” That appears to be code for catering to the streaming service. Whether Redstone will really try to compete in streaming against larger competitors like Disney and Netflix, or whether she will ultimately sell her media empire, remains an open question.

Under the new regime, Paramount has sent somewhat confusing signals about its plans for movies. At its February investor day, producer J.J. Abrams announced a new Star Trek project that would start shooting at the end of the year, with the cast from the rebooted version, which includes Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldaa. But castmembers had no deals in place, no idea that they were expected to start filming this year or that any announcement of the project would be made. Sources said there was no completed script, no budget, no green light.

Robbins — despite his past as a child actor, director and producer — has never made a mega-budget movie and certainly never dealt with anything on the scale of a Mission: Impossible before. He has set about developing a relationship with Cruise, but he couldn’t persuade the star to finish M:I 7 before moving on to M:I 8. He did, however, ask for and receive a script for 8. But that script doesn’t seem likely to be set in stone — after all, Cruise and McQuarrie decided to add a submarine to 7 after the film was supposed to have been wrapped.

The challenges before Robbins are clear. He has to manage the cost of M:I 8, theoretically Cruise’s last outing as Hunt and no doubt the most ambitious of the bunch. And he still has to resolve the standoff over the seventh movie’s theatrical window, which will presumably also involve the handling of the eighth. Cruise has shot some of the latter film in South Africa, but will have to hit pause for the publicity tour for Top Gun: Maverick, a film that studio insiders are certain is going to be a hit and thus make their biggest star an even more valuable partner.

A veteran of Tom Cruise movies laughs when asked how Robbins is likely to fare. This is the way these things go, he says: “Tom says what he wants and the studio says what it wants. And then Tom gets what he asked for.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/tom-cruise-mission-impossible-paramount-1235116830/

Two Hurtigruten ships chartered for Tom Cruise filming

Hurtigruten's Fridtjof Nansen and Vesterlen have been chartered by Truenorth, the production company working on the seventh 'Mission Impossible' movie with Tom Cruise.

Anne Kalosh, Editor, Seatrade Cruise News & Senior Associate Editor, Seatrade Cruise Review

September 2, 2020

Hurtigruten spokesman ystein Knoph confirmed the pair of ships are chartered to Truenorth from the end of August to the end of September, but didn't say more.

Production crew housing?

According to news reports in Norway citing a local government official, Fridtjof Nansen will be docked at Hellesylt and used as a hotel ship during the filming.

Built in 2019, the hybrid-battery-powered Fridtjof Nansen resumed sailing in July. However, a coronavirus outbreak on sister ship Roald Amundsen brought Hurtigruten's expedition cruises to a halt and sparked several investigations.

Coastal service was not impacted.

No word on Truenorth's use for coastal ship Vesterlen, which was recently upgraded.

https://www.seatrade-cruise.com/ship-operations/two-hurtigruten-ships-chartered-for-tom-cruise-filming