Tom Cruise Takes Break From Mission: Impossible Filming To Take Helicopter To Golf Club For Lunch

Though production hasn't yet restarted on the upcoming Mission: Impossible 7, star Tom Cruise seemingly found himself hungry for something that wasn't on the menu in the production offices while completing rehearsals. The Daily Mail brings word (and photos) of Cruise arriving at The Richmond Golf Club to grab some lunch, but making a stir as he arrived since he came to the venue via helicopter. Located in Southwest London, the club and its restaurant aren't too far from where production on the upcoming sequels is set up. Both Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8 are scheduled to shoot back-to-back with production halted just before it could officially begin.

"We hope to start shooting again in September. We were days from shooting in Venice — we were right at the epicenter when it all kicked off — so we had to shut down in Venice where we were four or five days from shooting," first assistant director Tommy Gormley told BBC Radio 4's Today back in June. "We hope to restart in September, we hope to visit all the countries we planned to and look to do a big chunk of it back in the UK on the backlot and in the studio, so September through to end April/May is our targets. We are convinced we can do this."

Cruise will be joined in the sequel by a number of returning cast members including Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, with ong time franchise veteran Ving Rhames, and even Henry Czerny from the 1996 original film. Newcomers to the series that are set to appear will include Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, and Esai Morales as the main villain.

Director Christopher McQuarrie will return as writer and director for both sequels, which will put him at having directed half of the entire franchise when the eighth film is released. Before the production delays he spoke on the Empire Podcast about developing two films that will be shot back-to-back, revealing the time constraints with which he conceived of both movies so close to the start of shooting. McQuarrie also opened up about how the two films will connect and if there's some kind of cliffhanger from the seventh to the eighth movie, with a surprising answer.

"I don't know....We don't even know if those movies connect yet."

Mission: Impossible 7's release date was previously delayed by four months after its stopage in production and is now slated to hit theaters on November 19, 2021. Mission: Impossible 8 will open on November 4, 2022. It's unclear if the film will be delayed any further due to the production hold ups.