Christopher McQuarrie Has An Idea for Mission: Impossible Spin-Offs

Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has some interesting ideas for how to keep moving the Mission: Impossible franchise forwards. McQuarrie, who helmed both Mission: Impossible – Fallout as well as 2015’s Rogue Nation installment, held a Q&A after an IMAX screening of Fallout where he addressed the possibility of spin-offs.

Speaking with Collider he said: “It’s this … the spinoff, when we talked about it was like, what would the movie be? We’ve talked about many Mission spinoffs. Mission is so much about the exploits of this character. What would the spinoffs then be shaped like? Would they still be Mission: Impossible movies? So much of what defines Mission is the fact that Tom Cruise is doing all of these crazy things,” McQuarrie told the crowd. 

He also addressed the issue with Rebecca Ferguson, who plays Isla Faust.

“Rebecca and I were talking about it, and I said, ‘I’ve got a better idea. You’re Rebecca, like let’s give you your identity,’ and I’m developing stuff with Rebecca to be Rebecca. And that’s what I would like to see. I feel like if you make an Ilsa spinoff, it would always be like, ‘When’s Ethan gonna make his cameo?’ And the thing that’s not to be underestimated about the role of Ilsa Faust, is that she is played by Rebecca Ferguson, who is a star. And it is a star that a lot of people haven’t figured out, haven’t woken up to that fact. And I’m kind of at her service.“

Essentially, it seems that McQuarrie is interested in rounding out the individual characters of the Mission: Impossible franchise, which, as McQuarrie points out, mostly serve to react to Tom Cruise’s stunt-prone Ethan Hunt.

The Mission: Impossible franchise launched in 1966 with the original CBS television series, which ran for seven seasons and 171 episodes. Mission: Impossible returned in 1988 with a rebooted series on ABC. It failed to find an audience, however, and was canceled after two seasons. It was nearly a decade later that the Tom Cruise-led Mission: Impossible feature film would turn the small screen spy series into a hugely-successful cinematic franchise.