Captain America and Agent Carter star Hayley Atwell will join Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible 7, returning writer-director Christopher McQuarrie announced on Instagam Friday.
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McQuarrie will film Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 back-to-back for studio Paramount, each planned for July 2021 and August 2022, respectively.
Rebecca Ferguson is expected to return for the sequels alongside star-producer Cruise. Also expected to return, but not yet confirmed, are franchise veterans Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg.
In January, a report from THR claimed McQuarrie was “said to be considering” bringing back Alec Baldwin’s Impossible Mission Force secretary Alan Hunley and Henry Cavill’s rogue CIA agent August Walker via flashbacks after both characters were killed in 2018’s Mission: Impossible โ Fallout. Story details remain under wraps, but McQuarrie once said he possesses a “very, very, very long list” of actors he hopes to recruit to the franchise.
“Oh my God, there’s not a short list. A very, very, very long list. There’s a lot of really extraordinary actors that I would love to work with,” McQuarrie previously told Collider when asked for a shortlist of names he wants to see join Mission: Impossible. “It’s always that thing of availability and the room within the story. That’s really the thing. But yeah, I’ve got a lot of people I’d like to work with. All I really want to do is work with Cate Blanchett. That’s just a given.”
A longtime Cruise collaborator who helmed franchise entries Rogue Nation and Fallout, McQuarrie last admitted he’s “freaked out” at the idea of tackling back-to-back sequels of the blockbuster action franchise.
“I pitched the idea of making two movies, and now I have to justify why it’s two movies,” McQuarrie told Empire earlier this year. “You’ve got to earn that. You’ve got to make something that swallows the last three movies whole. I’m freaked out now. We’ve talked ourselves into something. Holy sh-t.”
Atwell appeared as SSR agent-turned-S.H.I.E.L.D. co-founder Peggy Carter in Captain America: The First Avenger and sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with cameo appearances in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man and Avengers: Endgame. Atwell also headlined two-season ABC series Agent Carter, and will next lend her voice to Marvel Studios’ animated What If…? series planned for the Disney+ streaming service.
Paramount has dated its pair of untitled Mission: Impossible sequels for July 23, 2021 and August 5, 2022.