Rebecca Ferguson Accepts Another MISSION

We learned last month that director Christopher McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise were both on board for two more Mission: Impossible movies, shooting back-to-back for release in 2021 and 2022.  While the regular team is expected back, there had been no confirmations so far. Rebecca Ferguson, who joined the franchise as the enigmatic agent Ilsa Faust in McQuarrie's first movie, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation in 2015, has now become the first team member to confirm she'll return. According to Metro (via Dark Horizons), Ferguson was asked while a guest on UK chat show Lorraine (where she was promoting her incredibly entertaining new kids' movie, The Kid Who Would Be King) if we would be seeing her in the next Mission: Impossible movie, and she affirmed, "You will." Hopefully we get similar confirmations soon from Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, recent standout addition Vanessa Kirby, and maybe even Jeremy Renner, who sat out the last one. Variety recently reported that the seventh film will open on July 23, 2021, and the eighth on August 5, 2022. It's not a surprise that Paramount are eager to get more films out quickly, as last year's Mission: Impossible - Fallout (review here) proved the series' highest earner to date, raking in $790 million worldwide, and star Cruise, famous for doing his own stunts, will be 60 by the time the eighth movie premieres. Presumably the next two movies will also introduce a new generation of IMF agents including someone capable of carrying the crazy stunt torch when Cruise feels ready to pass it. It would be nice to see his Ethan Hunt character age gracefully into more of a mission planner role, like television's Jim Phelps, while someone else equally insane takes on the precipitous dangling.