Mission: Impossible 7 had to have been a difficult movie to make. That’s not because of whatever insane stunts Tom Cruise ended up doing, though certainly that happened. The movie was a massive production that took place entirely during a global pandemic, and so just making the film became much more complex than it otherwise would be. It also, unsurprisingly, was a very expensive movie to make. However, it’s now being claimed that the movie was so expensive that Tom Cruise is now in “crisis talks” over the cost overruns.
The claim comes from the Daily Mail which states that Tom Cruise is meeting with “Mission: Impossible bosses,” one assumes that means executives with producer Skydance and distributor Paramount, over the costs of Mission: Impossible 7. Recent reports put the film’s budget at close to $300 million, about $100 million more than what the last entry in the series, Mission: Impossible - Fallout cost to produce. The “extra” costs are said to be in the neighborhood of £50 million, or a little less than $70 million. And this is before any marketing money is spent to promote the film, which is currently set for release next year.
While the numbers may be quite high, the reason for the expensive production is certainly no surprise to anybody. The global pandemic caused multiple shutdowns of production and it simply forced the Mission: Impossible 7 to take a long time to get finished. Everyday a movie is in production it costs money and Mission: Impossible 7 was in production for, depending on how you count it, close to two years.
Certainly, assuming the budget number is even in the right ballpark, that’s a lot of money to put out on a movie that’s not going to be seeing any returns for more than a year and it makes sense for the studio to not be thrilled with that. At the same time, it’s not clear exactly what the point of the “crisis talks” really would be.
The only thing that could really be done to balance the cost overruns on Mission: Impossible 7 would be to keep a close eye on the costs of Mission: Impossible 8, which is getting underway now. If the studio is really concerned we could see budgets slashed in the second movie, which could in theory mean having to make changes in order to do things in ways that are cheaper, potentially scaling back action sequences. They could try getting Tom Cruise or others to take paycuts.
That’s a worst case scenario and it’s hard to guess how possible it really is. If studio execs are really freaking out the way it’s being implied, then we could see changes made to the next movie, but with Mission: Impossible 8 already underway that could actually end up costing more money than leaving things as they are. And it’s not like the Mission: Impossible films aren’t likely to make a lot of money. The difficulty is going to be waiting so long to see that movie come back to the studios.
