One of the more notable movies stymied by the Coronavirus pandemic was Mission: Impossible 7 and the follow-up that Christopher McQuarrie had planned to film back to back. Now, according to franchise regular Simon Pegg, the seventh movie is aiming to be back in action in September.
Talking with Variety, Pegg says that September is the plan for a restart on the film. "That will begin with the outdoor stuff," says Pegg. "That feels fairly doable, and obviously there will be precautions put in place."
Shooting indoors and in close proximity will be more of a challenge, but as Pegg says, "I don’t know what the testing situation is, how that works, or whether they’ll be able to be tested regularly."
His comments were echoed by Mission first assistant director Tommy Gormley, who spoke to Radio 4's Today. "We hope to restart in September. We hope to visit all the countries we planned to. We hope to do a big chunk of it back in the UK on the backlot and in the studio." Gormley said that the team hopes to be filming from September to April/May next year, assuming conditions allow.
The British film commission has published its guidelines for safe production of film and TV, and they're something that companies will need to adopt moving forward. But it's encouraging to see that the film world is slowly starting to get moving again.