Mission: Impossible: Jeremy Renner Turned Down Fallout Appearance Due to Character's Death

Mission: Impossible - Fallout intended to kill off Jeremy Renner's William Brandt.

By Timothy Adams

Jeremy Renner declined a return to the Mission: Impossible franchise once he learned his character would be killed. The Avengers star and lead in Paramount+'s Mayor of Kingstown joined Tom Cruise and the rest of the Mission: Impossible crew for 2011's Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and 2015's Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. However, Renner's IMF agent William Brandt was absent from 2018's Mission: Impossible – Fallout. While fans have wondered why Renner hasn't returned to reprise his role in subsequent movies, the actor revealed he was asked to return for a Fallout appearance but turned it down once he learned what director Christopher McQuarrie had planned for him.

"I remember they tried to bring me over[seas] for a week so they could kill my character, and I was like, 'No, you don't get to do that. You're not going to drag me over there and just kill my character,' like get out of here!" Jeremy Renner said during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. "If you're going to do this and you're going to use my character, you're going to do it right."

He then laughed and said, "I yelled at [director Christopher McQuarrie]. Dude, you're not going to do this to me like that; you're not going to do me wrong."

Jeremy Renner up for Mission: Impossible return

Even though Jeremy Renner turned down an appearance in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, it doesn't mean he wouldn't consider making a return down the road. In a recent interview with Collider, Renner explained his decision to step away from Mission: Impossible, and revealed that he's more than willing to return to the role if the opportunity presented itself.

"Yeah. I had to leave that," Renner explained. "I was supposed to do more with them. I love those guys. I love Tom [Cruise] so much. We had so much fun, and I love that character a lot. It requires a lot of time away. It's all in London. I had to go be a dad. It just wasn't gonna work out then... Maybe now that my daughter is older that could happen. I'd always jump into a Mission: Impossible anytime and back into Brandt. It's great."

Related:

What is Mission: Impossible 8 about?

The plot of Mission: Impossible 8 will continue the cliffhanger ending of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF raced and battled across the globe to keep terrorist Gabriel (Esai Morales) from getting the halves of "the key" that controls a powerful AI "Entity" that will become the ultimate weapon in cyber warfare. Ethan managed to get the key in hand (despite suffering heavy losses), but getting to the Entity itself requires a whole second movie, as the AI's source code is trapped on a Russian sub it sank, lost beneath the Arctic ice. With terrorists, arms dealers, and intelligence agencies from across the world now pursuing Ethan, this next mission is looking more and more "impossible" by the minute...

The returning cast includes Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Hayley Atwell, Shea Whigham, and Pom Klementieff. New cast members include Holt McCallany (Mindhunters), Nick Offerman (Parks and Rec, Civil War), Janet McTeer (Ozark), Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), Lucy Tulugarjuk, Katy O'Brian (The Mandalorian), and Tramell Tillman (Severance). 

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