Daily Times

Paramount aims to resume production on “Mission: Impossible 7” this September after it was shut down in late February due to the coronavirus pandemic. “We hope to restart in September. We hope to visit all the countries we planned to,” the film’s first assistant director, Tommy Gormley, said in an interview Tuesday on BBC Radio 4’s “Today.” “We hope to do a big chunk of it back in the U.K. on the backlot and in the studio, so September through to end April-May is our target.”

The studio does intend to start production in September, another individual with knowledge of the production said Tuesday.

Director Christopher McQuarrie’s production was four or five days away from beginning shooting in Venice, Italy, in February when the pandemic forced the planned production to halt, Gormley said. Italy was an early epicenter for the pandemic and has reported 233,000 cases and 33,000 deaths.

Gormley also praised the “excellent” guidelines issued this week by the British Film Commission on how to safely resume film and TV production. “If we have the protocols in place and we break down all the procedures very carefully,” he said, “we will get it going again. Some things are very challenging, such as stunt scenes, crowd scenes, et cetera, but we can’t do a ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie and not have a fight scene or car scenes in it.”

Tom Cruise is set to reprise his role as superspy Ethan Hunt in the film, with Vanessa Kirby, Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Esai Morales also on board. The film is currently slated to hit theaters Nov. 19, 2021.