#Mission: Impossible 7 Director Talks R-Rated Jack Reacher Idea and a More Hardcore Tom Cruise

Before director Christopher McQuarrie took the reins of the Mission Impossible franchise, he teamed up with Tom Cruise for another set of action flicks, that of the Jack Reacher movies. McQuarrie discussed his time on Jack Reacher recently, revealing that he and Cruise would have potentially taken the series into R-rated territory had it continued.

“Tom and I were talking about, had the series continued, to take Reacher to a place where, in the post-Deadpool, post-Joker world, Reacher could have been an R-rated movie and an R-rated franchise and really fed into the brutality of those books. We were fully ready to lean into that.”

Looking at the R-rated landscape and with such successes as the comic book movies Deadpool and Joker, Christopher McQuarrie reasoned that Jack Reacher could have gotten away with becoming a bit more brutal and bloodier. The source material on which the Cruise-starring movies are based are full of violent brawls between the lead character and an assortment of opponents, so it makes sense why McQuarrie would have wanted to take the franchise in this direction had he been given the opportunity to do so.

Sadly this was not to be, but instead, McQuarrie goes on to tease several projects that he and Tom Cruise do currently have in the pipeline that could very well add themselves to the roster of modern R-rated blockbuster movies.

“It’s a very un-Tom character, and we have plans for an even more un-Tom character that we’ve been talking about, which I’m hopeful about in the future. […] The franchise has moved on, and we haven’t. So we’ve now got stuff in the hopper. The [Jack Reacher] stuff we’re talking about now is tinker toys [compared to it], I’m actually very, very excited.”

Who these “un-Tom” characters are is really anyone’s guess, but considering the backlash that was leveled their way following the actor’s casting as Jack Reacher, the two of them taking on characters that one would not necessarily associate with The Cruiser does not come as too much of a surprise.

For the time being though, McQuarrie and Cruise are busy working on throwing the latter into even more dangerous scenarios for our entertainment in the Mission Impossible series. Like many movies during the current circumstances, Mission: Impossible 7 was forced to halt production very early into proceedings, but, first assistant director Tommy Gormley has recently stated that he is “convinced” they could get back to work again within the next few months and still have things wrapped by May of 2021. This would put things starting back up later this year around September time.

“We hope to start shooting again in September,” he said previously. “We were days from shooting in Venice – we were right at the epicenter when it all kicked off – so we had to shut down in Venice where we were four or five days from shooting.”

The last explosive entry, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, was written, produced, and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, and directly followed McQuarrie’s previous effort Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. The cast includes Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Michelle Monaghan, and Alec Baldwin, all of whom reprise their roles from the previous movies, along with Henry Cavill, Vanessa Kirby, and Angela Bassett, who join the franchise.

Two untitled sequels, one of them being Mission: Impossible 7, are both scheduled to be released in November 2021 and 2022, respectively, with both movies set to be helmed by McQuarrie. Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8 are expected to be the final parts of Ethan Hunt’s story, with McQuarrie teasing ties to the original movie that started it all. This comes to us from Empire.

Topics: Jack Reacher, Mission: Impossible 7