While we don’t know yet know what Ethan Hunt and the rest of the Impossible Mission Force will be hunting exactly (beyond a mixed soup of euro-baddies), we do at least now know the actual title for their latest adventure, and it's Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
Yes, while it sounds like Cruise and co have been hitting the Xbox a little hard, that is indeed the new name for the film, announced at a press conference in Dubai today (which was reported by Gulf News via Vulture). Cruise was joined by co-stars Paula Patton and Jeremy Renner, alongside producers Jeremy Chernov and Bryan Burk for the event.
According to the star/co-producer, the idea of ditching the numbers is one he’s been itching to do for a while… “One of the things I always wanted for the franchise was for it not to have a number afterwards. I’ve never done sequels to films and I never thought of these films as sequels. Paramount has done a great job in coming up with a title, so it’s not going to be MI2, 3, 4: it’s going to be Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. I always felt it should have a title.”
And as for the city itself? “JJ Abrams and I were going around the world and we happened to stop in Dubai for one evening,” recalls Burk. “We were dumbfounded and JJ said, ‘we have to come back here and make a movie’. When we got back, Tom had approached us about the new movie, and the first conversation that Tom and JJ had was, we have to shoot in Dubai.” Funny that, given where the press conference was being held…
Brad Bird is directing the film, which also features Ving Rhames, Josh Holloway, Simon Pegg, Michael Nyqvist, Anil Kapoor and Lea Seydoux. It’ll be released on December 16 next year.