This week saw the Empire Podcast reach its 400th episode – a milestone celebrated in a live show at Kings Place, London with a packed-out audience, and a ton of very special live guests, from Steve Coogan and Michael Winterbottom, to Emily Beecham, and director Todd Haynes. But that wasn’t all – in a surprise appearance, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Fallout director and friend of the podcast Christopher McQuarrie made a late entrance having just flown in from [REDACTED], offering some info about the recently-reported return of Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge in the upcoming Mission: Impossible 7 and 8.
"I've been thinking about Kittridge going all the way back to Rogue Nation,” said McQuarrie of the IMF agent who was convinced Ethan Hunt was the mole way back in the first 1996 movie. The filmmaker added that this time, he finally found a reason for the character to return. “I'm much more interested in finding something great for that character to do,” he said. “Early in this process I had an inkling that there could be a place for Kittridge – the tone of the movie, the shape of the movie lent itself to that. I realised, 'Kittridge has got to be in this scene.' I had written it not knowing who was in it, and then suddenly Kittridge came into it and the scene was transformed, it was really fun. I got to call Henry Czerny and say, 'You're in! Will you be in it?' He was great about it.”
While McQuarrie avoided dishing any details on the next two Missions, he did say that filming is due to begin “soon”, with star Tom Cruise currently in training for the movie. As anyone who’s heard our extensive Mission: Impossible interviews with McQuarrie before will know, they’re made unlike most movies out there – locking down the locations and set-pieces first, while the scripted story remains fluid around them through production. “I figured out the story about four weeks ago,” he revealed. “I moved one essential piece of the puzzle, and suddenly I was able to outline the entire movie in eight minutes.” And while he squashed those persistent rumours by stating definitively that Cruise won’t be going to space, he did tease that there’s “plenty” left for the daredevil actor to do on Earth. “We've figured out three obscene things that he's doing that I'm terrified of, that make the helicopter chase look like tinker toys," he promised.
Listen to the full interview in the live 400th episode of the Empire Podcast – out now on all good podcast apps, and available to stream in the PlanetRadio player below.
Mission: Impossible 7 is due in UK cinemas in July 2021, followed by Mission: Impossible 8 in August 2022.