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Justice League, still almost three months from reaching audiences, has generated behind-the-scenes drama the past few months that may be tough for the film itself to match.
Examples:
–Director Zack Snyder took himself off post-production duties because of a family tragedy, the suicide of his 20-year-old daughter in March.
–Even before that, it became known that Warner Bros. brought in Joss Whedon to revise the story. Whedon previously directed the first two Avengers movies for rival Marvel Studios.
–Whedon took over directing of extensive reshoots, estimated by Variety at $25 million, beyond the normal level that occur after principal photography has ended.
–One of the movies stars, Henry Cavill as Superman, can’t shave the mustache he grew for the unfinished Mission: Impossible 6. So his reshoots will involve digitally erasing said mustache. Naturally, this led to people coming out of images of Cavill’s Superman with a mustache.
–In the midst of this, Whedon’s ex-wife, Kai Cole, wrote a guest column for TheWrap on Aug. 20 about the writer-director’s marital infidelities. “I want to let women know that he is not who he pretends to be,” she wrote. While this doesn’t affect the film, it’s not the kind of publicity a studio likes about an expensive project.
The thing is, Warner Bros. and its DC Comics unit are on a roll after Wonder Woman generated both good reviews and a global box office of more than $800 million.
Mission: Impossible 6 star-producer Tom Cruise “is on the mend” and the movie is “on track” for its July 2018 release date, director Christopher McQuarrie said on Twitter today.
Cruise, 55, broke his right ankle during filming in the U.K. of a stunt for the movie, McQuarrie confirmed in a separate interview with Empire.
Video of Cruise’s injury surfaced a few days ago. The Sun UK tabloid responded with a story that M:I 6 filming would be delayed for four months. U.S. entertainment news websites such as TheWrap posted stories today saying the shutdown would be six to eight weeks.
McQuarrie, in the Empire interview, said the production hiatus “is unknown. We’re still figuring that out.”
The film had “seven or eight weeks” to complete production, the director said.
“We’ll assess what there is to be shot,” McQuarrie told Empire. “And what we can shoot.”
Once those scenes are filmed “we’ll go on a hiatus and then I’ll shift my attention to editorial,” he told the magazine. “We’ve already shot a huge chunk of the movie so you’re just taking a big chunk of post-production and moving it up sooner.”
After the hiatus, filming will resume, he said. “Nothing we’re looking at right now is going to affect the release date.”
Here’s McQuarrie’s post on Twitter:
Thank you all for your support and concern. Tom is on the mend and MI6 is on track for 07.27.2018 https://t.co/c4XqsEuRh4
Atomic Blonde, the spy movie starring Charlize Theron, finished fourth at the U.S. and Canada weekend box office, according to data compiled by the Box Office Mojo website.
The film generated box office of $18.6 million, finishing behind Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s World War II drama in its second weekend ($28.1 million); The Emoji Movie ($25.7 million); and Girls Trip ($20.1 million).
Atomic Blonde is based on a graphic novel titled The Coldest City. It had a 75 percent “fresh” rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website that aggregates critic reviews.
The movie was also the third consecutive spy movie to get a release date in the final weekend of July. Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation had the spot in 2015 and Jason Bourne did last year. Each finished No. 1 in their opening weekends.
Mission: Impossible 6, currently in production, will be slotted in the final July weekend in 2018.
Through a series of unrelated events, the last weekend of July has emerged as a hot release date in the U.S. for spy movies.
This year’s entry is Atomic Blonde, with Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton, an operative adept at both gunplay and hand-to-hand combat. It opens in the U.S. on July 28.
Atomic Blonde is the third spy film in a row to open during the final July weekend.
The streak began with Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, the fifth installment in star-producer Tom Cruise’s film series.
Rogue Nation originally was set to open on Christmas Day 2015. However, Paramount moved up Rogue Nation’s release to get it out of the way of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which had a Dec. 18, 2015 release date.
The strategy worked. Rogue Nation ended up with a box office of $195 million in the U.S. and Canada and $682.7 million globally.
Rogue Nation also affected another spy movie, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which came out just two weeks later. Rogue Nation was still going strong and U.N.C.L.E. was No. 3 its opening weekend.
In 2016, both star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass returned to the Bourne franchise with Jason Bourne. Universal slotted the movie for a July 29 release date.
Jason Bourne didn’t do quite as well as Rogue Nation, with a U.S.-Canada box office of $162.4 million and $415.5 million worldwide.
Regardless of Atomic Blonde’s box office results later this month, the July spy movie streak already is guaranteed to continue. Paramount has Mission: Impossible 6 scheduled for July 27, 2018. The movie currently is in production.
To a degree, this makes a lot of sense. The “summer” movie release in the U.S. begins in May. Many of the biggest summer films already have been in theaters and late July is a chance for spy films to find an audience.
If you haven’t seen it, here’s one of the trailers of Atomic Blonde.
Bruce Geller “cameo” as an IMF operative not selected for a mission by Briggs (Steven Hill).
A sixth Mission: Impossible film is in production. There’s plenty of publicity concerning star-producer Tom Cruise, actor Henry Cavill (who has joined the cast of this installment) and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie.
What you won’t find much is mention without whom none of it would be impossible, M:I creator Bruce Geller.
Geller died almost four decades ago in a crash of a twin-engine aircraft. It was a sudden end for someone who had brought two popular series to the air (M:I and Mannix) that ran a combined 15 years on CBS. He was a renaissance man capable of writing, producing, directing and song writing.
Geller, according to The New York Times account of his death, graduated from Yale in 1952, majoring in psychology, sociology and economics. His father, Abraham Geller, was a judge. However, Geller didn’t pursue a law career. (He did end up portraying his father in a 1975 TV movie, Fear on Trial.)
Instead, Geller became a writer of various television series, including Westerns such as Have Gun-Will Travel, The Westerner and The Rifleman. Along the way, he also wrote the lyrics and book for some plays.
By the mid-1960s, Geller was also a producer at Desilu. His brainchild was M:I, whose pilot involved the theft of atomic bombs from a Caribbean dictator unfriendly to the United States.
The pilot was budget at $440,346 with a 13-day shooting schedule, according to Patrick J. White’s The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier. It came in at $575,744, with 19 days of filming. While series episodes would be more modestly budgeted, it was a preview that M:I was not going to be an easy show to make.
CBS picked up M:I for the 1966-67 season. A year later, the network did the same for Mannix, featuring Mike Connors as a private investigator.
Geller didn’t create the character. Richard Levinson and William Link pitched the concept of a rugged, no-nonsense Joe Mannix coping with the corporate culture of investigative company Intertect.
Geller threw out a Levinson-Link story and wrote his own pilot script. Levinson and Link would be credited as creating the series, with Geller getting a “developed by” credit.
Mannix would be the last Desilu series. During its first season. Lucille Ball sold the company and it would become part of Paramount.
Eventually, that meant trouble for Geller. Paramount wanted to control costs and it eventually barred Geller from the studio lot. He’d continue to be credited as executive producer of both M:I and Mannix but without real input.
The producer moved over to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he made a police drama, Bronk, that only lasted one season on CBS (1975-76). Geller also produced and directed a movie with James Coburn about pickpockets, 1973’s Harry In Your Pocket.
Today, Geller is almost a footnote when it comes to the M:I film series, which began in 1996. He does get a credit (“Based on the Television Series Created by Bruce Geller”). But the films are more of a star vehicle for Tom Cruise, including spectacular stunts Cruise does himself.
There’s no way to know what Geller’s reaction would be. And, because he was only 47 when he died, there’s no way to know what Geller may have accomplished had it not been for the 1978 plane crash.
Regardless, Geller crammed a lot of living into his 47 years. At the end of the video below, you can see him collect his Emmy for the Mission: Impossible pilot script.
Few details are available. The entertainment news website linked to an Instagram exchange between MI:6 director Christopher McQuarrie and Cavill, which is how the announcement was made.
There’s a certain irony to this. The fifth installment of the Tom Cruise M:I series, 2015’s Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, was a major factor why The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie with Cavill as Napoleon Solo flopped.
M:I Rogue Nation originally was scheduled for Christmas 2015. But Paramount moved it up to late July of that year. U.N.C.L.E. came out two weeks later. But M:I helped suck the oxygen, and interest, for spy entertainment.
There’s another irony. Tom Cruise was approached to play Napoleon Solo in the U.N.C.L.E. movie. But he bowed out, in favor of doing Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation. That left the role open for Cavill.
McQuarrie scripted and directed Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation
M:I 6 is scheduled to be released in late July 2018.
Paramount has scheduled Mission: Impossible 6, starring Tom Cruise, for July 2018, Deadline: Hollywood and Variety reported separately.
The specific date is July 27, 2018. The last weekend of the month is becoming a bit of a preferred release date for spy movies.
Cruise’s last M:I film, Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, debuted on July 31, 2015. Universal had the U.S. launch of Jason Bourne on July 29 this year.
Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation had a U.S. opening weekend of $55.5 million, as part of a total U.S. box office of $195 million and $682.3 million globally.
Deadline noted that Warner Bros./DC Comics has an unspecified movie scheduled for the same date as M:I 6.
The Cruise M:I movies began in 1996. The producer-star will be 56 when the latest installment comes out.
Star-producer Tom Cruise is “on the verge” of completing a deal for a sixth Mission: Impossible movie, The Hollywood Reporter said.
Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, released in 2015, was a solid box office success. So a sixth film was expected. However, in August, the Deadline: Hollywood entertainment news website reported that Paramount halted pre-production until it worked out a deal with Cruise.
Now, according to THR, “issues have been resolved and M:I6 is being restarted.” The movie will go into production in the spring of 2017, the entertainment news site said.
The development isn’t startling. Paramount is struggling. Its parent company, Viacom, this year was embroiled in a soap opera that led to the ouster of its CEO. It makes sense that the studio would move to get a deal done with Cruise.
Meanwhile, despite being in great physical shape, Cruise is 54. Presumably, the horizon for him being the lead in action movies is winding down. He has another Jack Reacher movie coming out this fall.
The actor has both starred and produced the film series since its debut in 1996.
The sixth Mission: Impossible movie has been halted until Paramount works out a deal with star-producer Tom Cruise, Deadline: Hollywood reported.
Here’s an excerpt:
EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures has stopped the ticking clock and halted early pre-production of M:I6 Mission: Impossible. The studio won’t start up again until salary is worked out with franchise star Tom Cruise. The studio had hired between 15 to 20 people in London to start the soft prep work after writer/director Christopher McQuarrie and Cruise worked out the beats of the film, and McQuarrie went off to write the script. Those hired had just begun to work on the design of visual effects, and were told today to stop, we learned.
Some background: Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, released last year, was a hit. Its U.S.-Canada box office of $195 million was almost as much as SPECTRE’s $200 million.
The 2015 M:I film was originally scheduled to come out on Dec. 25, 2015. Paramount moved it up to the end of July that year. It was an astute move. The M:I movie avoided Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Also, the M:I film got the jump on 2015’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie, crushing that spy film at the box office.
Meanwhile, there has been a lot of drama at Paramount’s parent company, Viacom, including the ouster this week of its CEO, according to THIS NPR STORY.
Cruise, 54, has gotten a lot of mileage from his M:I franchise. The first Cruise M:I movie came out 20 years ago. After Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation came out, Paramount signaled it wanted another film in the series as soon as possible.
Christopher McQuarrie, the scripter-director of Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, will work on the next film in the Tom Cruise M:I series. McQuarrie, however, didn’t specify whether what job(s) he’d have on the new movie.
It’s not a surprise McQuarrie put out the news on Twitter. He provided a number of updates on the social media outlet about M:I Rogue Nation. If McQuarrie directs M:I 6, it would be the first time a director helmed two films in the series, which began in 1996.
Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation generated worldwide box office exceeding $680 million, including $195 million in the U.S. and Canada, according to Box Office Mojo.
UPDATE: The Hollywood Report, citing sources it didn’t identify, SAYS IN THIS STORY that McQuarrie will “write, direct and produce” the movie.
The Spy Command 