Tom pulls off the Impossible

No one breathe near Tom! The constant cry goes out, as megawatt Hollywood star Tom Cruise works in norway on the seventh instalment in the Mission Impossible film series.

Cruise (above), his fellow actors and crew must surely be among the most Covid-secure beings in the world as they race to complete the action-adventure epic, which is up and filming again after work was halted by the pandemic.

even as director Christopher McQuarrie filmed in Scandinavia, production offices were being set up in Rome and Venice, where Mission: Impossible 7 will be shooting in october and november. Vanessa Kirby, who last weekend won the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival for her mesmerising performance in Pieces of A Woman, will join Cruise on location to reprise her role as the femmefatale White Widow.

The film is due for release in november of next year. But all eyes are fixed on this november, too.

The new Bond film no Time To Die is due to open here on november 12, eight days before it is released in the United States.

There’s a lot of nervousness following the release of Christopher nolan’s ace time-bending thriller Tenet, which opened while cinemas were still closed in many major markets like California and new York, and while the necessary precautions of socially-distanced seating put a dent in ticket sales.

no Time To Die will open in november, because it must.

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film’s already in its second marketing campaign (an April date was abandoned due to the lockdown). A release date shift to 2021, requiring a third launch, would be catastrophic for all the studios concerned.

Hundreds of millions of pounds are riding on no Time To Die. ‘Bond will release this november or we’re as good as finished with distribution into cinemas for the forseeable future,’ a rival studio executive said to me, in a Zoom call.