MISSI ON: IMPOSSI BLE 5

Direct or Christopher McQuarrie STARING Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Alec Baldwin

ETA 26 December 2015 Looks like perennial adrenaline junkie Tom Cruise is up to his old tricks for this fifth installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise. Recently filming an impressive set-piece for Christopher McQuarrie’s Ghost

Protocol follow-up in the English countryside, passers-by spotted the daredevil 52-year-old scaling the side of a four-engine military aircraft flying, yes flying, at an altitude of 5,000ft (context: anything above 8,000 can be fatal).

Quite why Cruise’s Impossible Missions Force Agent Ethan Hunt is scrambling around on the back of an aeroplane is anybody’s guess, with the film’s plot still a closely guarded secret. But here’s what we do know:

Iron Man 3’ s Drew Pearce is on scriptwriting duties; filming locations already filmed include London, Vienna and Morocco; and returning characters comprise familiar faces including Simon Pegg’s Benji, Jeremy Renner’s Brandt and Ving Rhames’ series stalwart Luther Stickell. Newbies, meanwhile, include Alec Baldwin – presumably as an IMF bigwig – and Bafta-winning Southcliffe star Sean Harris as the film’s baddie.

It won’t just be Cruise hogging all the action this time around, though, with Pegg telling Total Film that his tech whizz has been promoted to full field duty for M:I 5. “When we first saw Benji in Mission:

Impossible III he was this IT nerd,” he laughs. “Then [ in Ghost Protocol] he became this fresh-faced puppy dog seeing action for the first time. So in this one he will have been out in the field for a while and he will have survived a number of scrapes, so there’s going to be another evolution. He’s going to be lot better at his job.”