Will Tom Cruise End “Mission: Impossible ”Franchise After “The Final Reckoning”? 'You Gotta See the Movie'

Are Tom Cruise and his Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie actually planning to end the long-running action series?

While Cruise, 62, and filmmaker McQuarrie, 56, spoke with Empire magazine about the upcomingMission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, the pair avoided directly addressing whether the film will cap off Cruise's character Ethan Hunt's story.

"You gotta see the movie,” Cruise told the outlet with a laugh, when he and McQuarrie were asked whether The Final Reckoning will actually be the final Mission: Impossible movie, nearly three decades and seven movies removed from 1996's hit original.

“It’s a hard thing for me to discuss at the moment, because it really is something that you have to experience," Cruise said. He also described the new movie as “an epic, emotional journey of the entire franchise,” even adding, “It’s Homeric,” in reference to the author of Ancient Greek legends like The Odyssey and The Iliad.

Related: Mission: Impossible 8 Director Says an Early Audience Member 'Almost Had a Heart Attack' During Action Sequence

McQuarrie, who began working with Cruise on the action series with 2015's Rogue Nation, teased that The Final Reckoning offers an end to the story that began when Ethan Hunt first accepted his mission all those years ago. "It is, I hope, the satisfying conclusion to a 30-year story arc,” McQuarrie told the outlet. “I’m pretty confident that people are going to feel that the title was appropriate.”

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Cruise and McQuarrie revealed the first trailer for The Final Reckoning on Nov. 11. The film picks up where the conflict of 2023's Dead Reckoning, which was originally titled Dead Reckoning Part One, left off as Hunt and his team fight an artificial intelligence known as "the Entity." 

Related: Kirsten Dunst Remembers Tom Cruise Decorating Her Dressing Room for Christmas on the Interview with the Vampire Set

Cruise stars in the eighth installment along with Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Hayley Atwell, Shea Whigham, Pom Klementieff and Henry Czerny, all of whom reprise their roels from past films. Nick Offerman, Bob Odenkirk, Janet McTeer, Hannah Waddingham and Katy O'Brian join the cast as new characters.

The eighth Mission: Impossible installment began filming in the U.K., Malta, South Africa and Norway in early 2022; production stalled in July 2023 due to the Hollywood writers and actors’ strikes and resumed in March 2024. 

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning hits theaters May 23.

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