The five most explosive unmade ‘Mission: Impossible’ movies
With Tom Cruise’s iconic secret agent Ethan Hunt primed to explode back into cinemas worldwide in the much-anticipated Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, fans of the long-running franchise have been priming themselves for an emotional goodbye to the series. Over the years, it’s been arguably the most consistent blockbuster franchise, continuously finding new and breathtaking ways for Cruise to endanger his life for our entertainment.
The series has been running, jumping, shooting, and espionage-ing for almost 30 years, which is a testament to its uncanny staying power. It stands to reason, though, that the eight films that were produced weren’t the only incarnations of the series that had been developed over the decades. After all, enormous franchises like this are often a conveyor belt of writers, directors, and actors all pitching different versions of the story that never see the light of day.
Mission: Impossible is more fascinating than most in this regard, primarily because its first five entries were envisioned as a showcase for each new director that entered the fray. Indeed, several Hollywood legends have been involved with the series at different times, and their daring visions have fallen by the wayside for a variety of reasons.
From an unknown screenwriter unexpectedly finding himself in the frame, to a series of auteurs pitching wildly divergent takes on traditionally action-heavy material, here are the five most explosive Mission: Impossible movies that were never made.
Five explosive unmade ‘Mission: Impossible’ movies:
Oliver Stone – ‘Mission: Impossible II’
When Brian De Palma walked away from the Mission: Impossible franchise after setting the tone with the first movie, Cruise and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, decided they didn’t want that same tone for the sequel. They settled on the idea that each film in the franchise would have a different flavour than the last one, which entailed hiring a new director each time. For Mission: Impossible II, their first port of call was none other than Platoon and Wall Street’s Oliver Stone.
At the time, Stone had largely steered clear of action blockbusters and anything that whiffed of intellectual property, preferring to create his own material. However, he did have a history with Cruise thanks to the searing Born on the Fourth of July, so he signed up for the project and began working on a script with David Marconi (Enemy of the State). This script saw Ethan Hunt and his team tangling with an evil supercomputer and the humans taking their marching orders from it. The computer eventually creates elaborate simulations, and Hunt finds himself in an AI-generated Garden of Eden at one point.
It was soon decided that Stone and Marconi had deviated too far from what Cruise envisioned for Mission: Impossible, and this version of the project was scrapped in favour of John Woo’s flamboyant, slow-motion, dove-filled action extravaganza. However, its plot elements undoubtedly sound similar to what Christopher McQuarrie eventually brought to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning with the creation of ‘The Entity,’ a villainous Artificial Intelligence that manipulates Hunt.
David Fincher – ‘Mission: Impossible III’
After Woo’s ballet of guns, motorcycles, romance, and lethal bioweapons, Cruise plotted another significant change of direction for Mission: Impossible III. This time, he approached Se7en and Fight Club’s David Fincher about bringing his uniquely nihilistic sensibilities to the table. Shockingly, Fincher was game for it, and he signed on the dotted line in 2002, before it was inevitably decided that these uniquely nihilistic sensibilities perhaps weren’t a natural fit for Hunt’s series of not-so-impossible adventures.
Fincher’s version of Mission: Impossible has always been shrouded in mystery, and all that is known about the plot is that it would have delved into the African black market organ trade. That speaks to the darker, more realistic tone that Fincher was aiming for, and it sounds perfectly in-keeping with what an auteur like him would do with such an IP. Unfortunately, it appears he forgot to include much action in his pitch, and Cruise decided to cut him loose.
During a 2022 appearance on the Light the Fuse podcast, Cruise spoke about why Fincher’s take on the material didn’t work out. He was unsurprisingly vague on details, but he did note, “We didn’t move forward because…it would’ve just been very different.” He claimed that he’s worked on Mission: Impossible movies with “a lot of writers and different directors,” and some of them “never really grasp what works about the franchise.” Namely: more death-defying stunts, less organ trafficking.
Joe Carnahan – ‘Mission: Impossible III’
After Cruise showed Fincher the door, he went to an unusual director as his next candidate to potentially helm Mission: Impossible III. These days, Joe Carnahan is probably best known as the director of action flicks like Smokin’ Aces and Copshop, as well as the Liam Neeson survival thriller The Grey. Back then, though, he only had the genuinely excellent ’70s-inspired crime film Narc under his belt. Cruise was credited as a producer on that movie and was integral in securing its distribution.
Carnahan’s script, which he worked on for a year with Nightcrawler scribe Dan Gilroy, was described as existing in the middle ground between Woo’s M:I:II and Fincher’s grim vision of M:I:III. He wanted it to be the most “punk rock” Mission: Impossible yet, but knew he had to deliver on the action, too. Like Fincher, he wanted to set the film in Africa, but this time the plot focused on the country’s militarisation at the hands of a villain pitched in the vein of the Oklahoma City Bomber, Timothy McVeigh.
To Cruise and Paramount’s dismay, Carnahan and Gilroy’s script was much smaller in scale than they’d anticipated, so the legendary Robert Towne was hired to complete a rewrite. When Carnahan read this, though, he felt it was too similar to what had come before, so he bowed out of the film, calling the process “artistically suffocating.”
When he later spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the frustrating situation, he confessed it all boiled down to the dreaded Hollywood ‘creative differences.’ Indeed, he was so beaten down by the process that he finally told the studio, “I’ve given you guys my absolute best shot, and we’re not seeing this film in even remotely the same way. So, let’s all be grown-up about it, and everybody step away from the table.”
Ben Trebilcook – ‘Mission: Impossible III’
So far, the names attached to unmade Mission: Impossible movies have been Hollywood legends like Stone and Fincher, and Carnahan, who is currently working on a thriller with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Who, then, you may ask, is Ben Trebilcook? Well, he’s an English screenwriter who has only one low-budget horror movie and a short film credit on his IMDB page – yet by a bizarre series of events, he attracted the attention of Cruise in the early ’00s, and wrote a draft of Mission: Impossible III.
Trebilcook’s one-in-a-million odyssey began when he wrote a spec script for Die Hard 4, and literally phoned Fox to tell them about it. Amazingly, whoever he spoke to at the studio told him to secure an agent if he wanted anyone to read the script, so he went to the library to get the addresses of 100 agents in Los Angeles. Three replied, and he chose the one who was also a lawyer and a manager, and just so happened to go to law school with Bruce Willis’ attorney. Yes, really. When that script began doing the rounds, Trebilcook was suddenly contacted by Cruise’s CW Productions, who asked if he had any ideas that fit the Mission: Impossible franchise.
An excited Trebilcook, who couldn’t quite believe his luck, quickly began rewriting an old action screenplay as an Ethan Hunt vehicle. To his horror, though, the world was changed forever on 9/11, and his script, which included a scene uncomfortably similar to that real-life tragedy, was put on indefinite hold. “I didn’t want anybody to see that script again,” he wrote on his website. “I was sad. New York is my favourite place.” While Trebilcook continued to write, nothing was ever produced, and those hopes of a bright Hollywood future simply drifted into the ether over the next few years.
Edgar Wright – ‘Mission: Impossible IV’
In 2010, Cruise approached Edgar Wright with an offer he felt the Shaun of the Dead director couldn’t refuse. Cruise wanted him for Mission: Impossible IV, and Andre Nemec and Josh Appelbaum had already written a script. It made sense for the star to think of Wright, as he worked with the director’s artistic muse, Simon Pegg, on M:I:III and was set to do so again. Seemingly, this was a go-picture, and all Wright had to do was say “Yes.” Instead, he said “No.”
It turned out that the offer had simply come at a bad time for Wright, who had just made Scott Pilgrim vs the World, and had press duties to attend to for that labour of love. That was the official reason he gave Cruise for turning him down, anyway. However, in 2023, Wright confessed that he also preferred the idea of remaining a fan instead of an active participant in the franchise. “Sometimes if you love a series, you almost don’t want to be the thing that could possibly fuck it up, you know what I mean?” he told the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
Wright wound up in a cinema on opening day for Brad Bird’s “fucking great” Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, not regretting for a single second that he hadn’t made the film. “I didn’t ever sit there thinking, ‘I could’ve done that,'” he chuckled. “I was thinking, ‘This is great.'”
Amusingly, though, Wright did end up having a tangible effect on one of the Mission films when he pointed out an audio cue that confused him during a screening of McQuarrie’s seventh entry, Dead Reckoning. The director realised everyone else in the screening was also confused, but they hadn’t said anything, so Wright’s honesty “changed the entire movie for the better.” Good job, Edgar.
