Paramount officially delays ‘Mission: Impossible 7′ to September 2022, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ to May 2022.

THE Mission: Impossible 7 release date has been delayed to September 2022.

Beginning production in early 2020, the upcoming action sequel has been one of the many Hollywood projects greatly impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Filming has been shut down multiple times, prompting studio Paramount to sue Mission: Impossible 7’s insurance company.

The movie has also seen its release date pushed back several times. Initially, Mission: Impossible 7 was supposed to premiere in July 2021, but it’s been delayed to next year.

Release date delays have been a major talking point in the industry recently, with growing concerns over the Delta variant spread and a new spike in COVID-19 cases across the country. While some movies are standing pat in their scheduled release dates, others have been moved as studios figure out what to do. Paramount is reconfiguring their upcoming calendar, and some changes they’ve made have had a domino effect on Mission: Impossible 7.

According to THR’s Aaron Couch, Mission: Impossible 7 has been delayed to September 30, 2022.  This move was preempted by the Top Gun: Maverick release date delay. Top Gun 2 was pushed back to May 2022, in Mission: Impossible 7’s old release date.

Since Paramount is moving Top Gun: Maverick to next summer, it makes sense they’d also delay Mission: Impossible 7 again. Both sequels are massive projects for star Tom Cruise, and the studio wouldn’t want them competing directly against each other.

Spacing them out gives the two movies an opportunity to find box office success, which may have been a motivating factor behind Paramount’s thought process. Fall 2021 box office prospects remain uncertain, so Top Gun: Maverick could have been in a tough position if it stuck to its previously scheduled date.

Paramount is clearly hoping things will have improved substantially by next summer, which would allow Top Gun: Maverick to earn even more during its run. There are plans for the film to go to streaming service Paramount+ after a shortened theatrical window, but it will initially only be on the big screen.

This move should benefit Mission: Impossible 7 as well. While it appears some members of the cast, like Hayley Atwell, have wrapped filming, Mission: Impossible 7 remains in production. Pushing the release date back several months gives director Christopher McQuarrie more time to put together the finished movie, which looks to be a truly ambitious work.

It remains to be seen if this will have any affect on Mission: Impossible 8, which is currently slated for a July 2023 release. Originally, the plan called for Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 to shoot back-to-back, but that changed with the pandemic. If things stand the way they are, Cruise is set to have a busy couple of years promoting and shooting his new movies.

(source: screenrant.com)

(ROHN ROMULO)