As we head toward the end of another month, the seemingly endless Covid pandemic has led to Paramount announcing that Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 are finding it an impossible mission to settle on a release date, with both movies receive a further delay of one year each to their previously set release dates. The latest installments of the popular action franchise have already had numerous delays over the last 20 months, and now Mission: Impossible 7 will move from September 30th, 2022 to July 14th, 2023, while Mission: Impossible 8 slides from July 7th, 2023 to June 28th, 2024.
The Mission: Impossible sequels have struggled to find a release date since the early part of the pandemic in April 2020, when the 7th movie in the franchise was moved from July to December that year. Of course, as the pandemic continued to cause massive disruption to movie shoots and release schedules, the film was then moved to November 2021, and then again into this year, which once again has not managed to stick. However, Paramount’s other Tom Cruise movie Top Gun: Maverick will still, for now, hold its May 27th, 2022 release date.
A joint statement by Paramount and Skydance read: “After thoughtful consideration, Paramount Pictures and Skydance have decided to postpone the release dates for Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 in response to delays due to the ongoing pandemic. The new release dates will be July 14th, 2023, and June 28th, 2024. We look forward to providing moviegoers with an unparalleled theatrical experience.”
Paramount’s Change to Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 Release Dates Could Prove to Be Overcautious
om Cruise’s return as Ethan Hunt has been such a long time coming that some fans have started to question whether they will ever see the movies arrive in cinemas. While Paramount will obviously release the movies when it feels the time is right, another year-long delay for both films could end up being a little overcautious. Spider-Man: No Way Home’s recent phenomenal success has proven that audiences will turn out in numbers for the right movie, and Paramount’s own Scream has just had a strong opening at the box office.
While movies like the Mission: Impossible sequels, like many releases, would enjoy more success if Covid was no longer a factor, the uncertainty around how long it will be before Covid becomes a thing that the world manages to live with in some normalcy makes it challenging to work out when will be a good time to release a film. In a year’s time, there could be another superwave of the disease, and will that lead to yet another delay? In all, the Mission: Impossible series has grossed over $3.5 billion across the first six movies, which makes the sequels almost certain hits whenever they release. In delaying these movies further, fans will have had a five-year wait since Mission: Impossible – Fallout arrived in cinemas in 2018, which actually now puts them in line with the gaps between most of the other movies in the franchise.