Deadline is telling us that Hollywood is buzzing with news about Mission Impossible 4. The screenplay is now done and the preliminary budget is being worked out. The biggest news coming from this buzz though is that if Knight and Day, Cruise‘s recent action flick, doesn’t perform, Paramount may kill Mission Impossible 4.
While it is unlikely that Paramount will completely kill the project, sources are saying that the studio has a few options. One would be to take the focus off of Cruise‘s character, Ethan Hunt and instead put the focus of the film on a new character, perhaps a protege of Hunts. It wouldn’t be smart to kill the entire film considering the franchise is very well established. Paramount has also just committed to the Les Grossman film starring Cruise and apparently he made a big deal to get Mission Impossible 4 going and off the ground.
The film is also very important for producer J.J. Abrams who is one of the most prominent at Paramount. I’ve always liked the Mission Impossible films and while I haven’t seen Knight and Day, it looks entertaining enough. It’ll be interesting to see where Paramount goes with this.
Brad Bird‘s MI:4 currently has a December 2011 release date.
What do you think? Is Tom Cruise dying out? Should they switch the focus of the series?