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Tom Cruise‘s highly anticipated seventh and eighth Mission: Impossible films, Dead Reckoning Parts 1 & 2 will premiere on July 14, 2023, and June 28, 2024. In the meantime, fans are given behind-the-scenes teasers like the actor’s risky stunts — one of which is the most dangerous he’s ever done and the biggest ever in movie history.
16 years ago, the Top Gun star wouldn’t have gotten away with this. Paramount actually fired him over his stunts after the third film. Here’s the story behind that pivotal moment in Cruise’s long career.
Why Did Paramount Fire Tom Cruise From ‘Mission Impossible’?
In 2006, Paramount — the same studio that approved Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick — fired him from the Mission Impossible franchise. At that time, the studio announced via Wall Street Journal that they were cutting ties with The Mummy star after their 14-year collaboration.
“We don’t think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot,” they said in the statement. “His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount.”
Sumner Redstone, then-chairman of Paramount’s parent company Viacom told the Journal back then that Cruise “had never behaved this way before, he really went over the top.”
After that, he hired a new publicist and steered clear of big-budget action films. His production company also signed a new deal with MGM, which gave him partial ownership in the classic Hollywood studio United Artists.
Then once he received rave reviews for his performance as studio head, Les Grossman in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder (2008), The Outsiders star redeemed himself. Paramount wanted him back. After he expressed his interest in doing a fourth MI film, Ghost Protocol (2011), the studio approved it under one condition: that they groom a new actor (Jeremy Renner) as his character, Ethan Hunt’s replacement.
But when the movie made $700 million worldwide, $300 million more than the third installment, Paramount was convinced that Cruise and his stunts were the real deal.
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Why Does Tom Cruise Do His Own Stunts?
Cruise, who is worth $600 million, still does his own stunts to this day simply because it’s part of who he is. “No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance? Why do you do your own dancing?'” he responded when asked about it during The Hollywood Reporter‘s “MasterClass Conversation” back in May 2022.
He’s also always loved danger. During an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, he shared stories about spending his childhood doing “flips off of [his] house into the snow.” He added that he’s “always loved fast cars, motorcycles, hiking, and climbing,” as well as skydiving, which he famously did with James Corden on his show once.
On top of that, Cruise is just a highly committed action star. “I feel that [when acting] you’re bringing everything, you know, physically and emotionally, to a character in a story,” he said in the same interview. “I’ve trained for 30 years doing [stunts] and it allows us to put cameras where you are normally not able to.”
Inside Tom Cruise’s Dangerous Stunts In ‘Mission: Impossible 8’
In August 2022, Dead Reckoning director, Christopher McQuarrie told the Light The Fuse podcast that Cruise performed a lot of “ambitious” stunts in the film. “We have the bulk of the third act action sequence in the can for part 2,” he spilled.
“We already know what the third act of part 2 is, and it’s off the chain. It’s Tom topping Tom topping Tom, several times a day. […] That’s one of two really big, really ambitious sequences in the movie.”
In late 2021, Cruise was reportedly seen practicing a death-defying scene — hanging upside down on a plane, 2000 feet above Cambridge. “Tom had started to learn to fly a Boeing Stearman biplane earlier this year for a major stunt scene in Mission: Impossible 8,” an insider said at that time.
They continued: “It’s obviously a highly skilled task but as usual he has no plans to cut any corners or bring in a stuntman. Filming has only just wrapped on Mission: Impossible 7 but Tom has not given himself a break. And trying to film jaw-dropping scenes with an 80-year-old plane is particularly dangerous.”
