Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two Adds Fan-Favorite Ted Lasso Star

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is finally hitting theaters this summer, and Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie are already busy filming the franchise's eighth installmentMission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two. There are some exciting actors joining for Part One, including Marvel stars Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff, and while it's not completely clear who is returning for Part Two, McQuarrie just announced an exciting addition to the cast. Hannah Waddingham, who is best known for playing Rebecca Welton in the beloved Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso, will be joining Cruise in the upcoming action film. 

"and Hannah Waddingham... #Godspeed #DeadReckoning," McQuarrie shared on Instagram. You can check out a photo of Waddingham on the film's set below:

What Does "Dead Reckoning" Mean? 

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One wrapped production last year, and McQuarrie previously spoke about the meaning behind the Dead Reckoning, which was revealed at CinemaCon along with Cruise.

"When I came up with the title, I knew it applied more to Part Two than it did to Part One, which is why it eventually settled on being Part One and Part Two," McQuarrie told  Light the Fuse. "The title for the first movie was nearly ... a title that referred to something like a Ghost Protocol kind of thing, it was a government policy – It wasn't a government policy, it was a government, what would you call it? A government measure of last resort, with catastrophic consequences. By the time we got to the end of Part One, that had distilled down into an entirely different set of circumstances that appear in Part Two and not in Part One. So, the word would no longer have been appropriate for the title of Part One."

He continued, "And yet, Dead Reckoning didn't really apply as well to Part One as well as it did to Part Two until we started to play with the beginning of the movie, and kind of recognize that Dead Reckoning, while it sounded cool, what did it really have to do with the movie? And over the course of our, really starting to dig down into the arc of the character journey for Ethan [Hunt], it took on deeper and deeper meanings as we went. And you'll see just how thematic and how it represents, how it's conceptually represented in every character's journey in this film we're in."

Why Isn't Angela Bassett in Mission: Impossible 7?

Angela Bassett is no stranger to the world of franchises. She recently reprised her role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, which makes her the first actor of the franchise to be nominated. Bassett also played Erica Sloane in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, but she sadly will not be returning for the seventh installment. 

"I can't tease anything about Mission: Impossible 7 except that, well, COVID took me out," Bassett revealed to Collider in 2021. "Literally, or kept me out, how about that?," she added with a laugh. "You know, yeah, that's all I know about that, so maybe I'll be able to tease 8 when that comes along."

The release dates for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two are July 14th of this year and June 28, 2024, respectively.

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