Mission: Impossible 5 Sets Cast, Begins Filming in Austria

The cast is coming together for Mission: Impossible 5, and we've got our first notion of what Tom Cruise's hair will look like (always the biggest question as an M:I movie gears up for production) thanks to a photo of the actor scouting locations. Austrian paper The Local (via Dark Horizons) published this picture. They report that the age defying star/producer was up on the roof of Vienna's State Opera House, where he'll be shooting an action scene at night. (Austria is fast becoming the location for spies to attend operas; James Bond also spent a night at the opera in that country in Quantum of Solace's most memorable scene.) Cameras start rolling on Saturday.

In his fifth outing as IMF superspy Ethan Hunt, Cruise is joined by returning team members Jeremy Renner (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, The Bourne Legacy), Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible III and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and (per Dark Horizons) Ving Rhames (veteran of all the Mission: Impossible films to date), along with newcomers to the series Rebecca Ferguson (The White Queen) and Alec Baldwin (The Hunt For Red October). Deadline reports that Baldwin will play the Director of the CIA. Swedish actress Ferguson is still a relatively fresh face, but I was quite impressed by her in this summer's Hercules and look forward to her spy debut! Her role is as yet unknown.

Mission: Impossible 5 will also shoot in London, where the Houses of Parliament themselves are rumored to be a possible filming location. As previously reported, Christopher McQuarrie (Jack Reacher) is directing, and he's got his work cut out for him if he wants his film to live up to the benchmark set by Brad Bird with the fourth film, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (by far the best entry in the film series to date). Personally, I'm hoping McQuarrie continues in the promising direction Bird pointed the franchise, making the films more like the classic television series. While the first three films were largely star vehicles for Cruise, Ghost Protocol truly felt like a team movie, a hallmark of the series. It was also packed with clever references to the show, and even established the TV IMF's longtime nemesis The Syndicate (re-dressed as a terrorist organization instead of the mob) as a potential enemy in the fifth film. I hope that comes to pass! While previous films in the series have gone by the shorthand "M:I-2" or "M:I-iii," this one will have to find a different moniker. (Hopefully it will get its own subtitle like Ghost Protocol.) Not only is MI5 the name of the British internal Security Service, but in America it's also the title of the TV series about that service that was known as Spooks in the UK. And Spooks has its own movie coming out soon, which will also presumably utilize the MI-5 title on this side of the pond. None of that, however, has stopped McQuarrie from hashtagging his Tweets "#MI5Diary."