Image Credit: Paramount Pictures
Variety has published a piece about the chaos that COVID-19 has wreaked with the production of Mission: Impossible 7, and in this article, it states that "the plan is for the seventh and eighth films to serve as a farewell to the Cruise character. , Ethan Hunt ”, and as the“ highlight of the whole series ”.
The franchise could continue without Hunt, of course, but it looks like Paramount Pictures and Skydance could very well be considering MI8 as the latest installment in the mega-budget franchise.
It has also come to light that the next film will end "on a cliffhanger" and Cruise "wants to make sure the transition between the two films is seamless." This is one of the main reasons both films were recently postponed, Mission: Impossible 7 was moved from September 30, 2022, to July 14, 2023, Mission: Impossible 8 on June 28, 2024, instead of July 7, 2023.
Cruise is rumored to want to finish filming the eighth film before the seventh is released, so production on MI8 is expected to start very soon in South Africa.