Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Director on Decision to Split It Into Two Parts

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning helmer Christopher McQuarrie has explained the rationale behind splitting the film into two parts, citing the story’s emotional depth and expanding cast as contributing factors.

Dead Reckoning Part One will clock in at two hours and 36 minutes without credits, pushing it past 2018’s Mission: Impossible Fallout, which had a runtime of two hours and 27 minutes. McQuarrie told Collider that he always knew the next chapter would be bigger than Fallout.

“Fallout really grew because of all the character and emotion we were putting into the story,” McQuarrie said. “I knew I wanted to expand the cast, and I knew I wanted to give each one of those characters more to do, so I knew the movie was going to be bigger and longer than Fallout.

“At which point I said, ‘Why are we fighting this? Why are we going to try to jam this into two hours? Let’s just break it in half and make it two movies,'” he added, reflecting on the decision. “That really was the rationale behind it being a two-part movie. It wasn’t just that the story was bigger but that we wanted more emotion in the movie.”

McQuarrie said Paramount Pictures were receptive to the idea of splitting the story across two films, but production of the two titles didn’t come without its challenges. There was a lot of planning, coordinating, and managing that needed time on the logistics side of the shoot.

“It was complicated by the fact that certain things in Part Two required stopping Part One to shoot them, whether it was because of weather or actor availability,” he said. “And so, with all the other challenges that were confronting this movie while we were making it, there was the challenge of stopping in the middle, not even knowing what the full movie was, and trying to predict what it was in the second film.”

The two films were supposed to be filmed back-to-back, but the production faced multiple setbacks amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Principal photography on Part Two eventually kicked off in March 2022, though McQuarrie admits they still haven’t figured out the ending.

“I don’t know what the ending of Part Two is, so I couldn’t tell you,” he confessed to Collider. “I’m not being evasive. I could tell you that I know what the end of Part Two is, but I can’t guarantee that that will be the ending when we get there. Tom and I never obsess about executing the plan. We always have a direction, we always have a place we’re going.

“In retrospect, it sounds as though what we do is just flying by the seat of our pants and making it up as we go along,” he continued. “That’s not an accurate description. You are definitely flying in a direction, you’re definitely prepared. You couldn’t be that cavalier without somebody getting seriously physically hurt. These things are planned within an inch of their life. Along the way, we see a shiny object and go for it.”

There’s a lot of hype building for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, as the two-part movie will reportedly serve as a send-off for Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. Part One will hit theaters on July 12, 2023, with Part Two expected to follow less than a year later, on June 28, 2024.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.