Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a 2018 American action spy film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. The sequel to Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015), it is the sixth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. The ensemble cast comprises Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, Michelle Monaghan, and Alec Baldwin. Set two years after the events of Rogue Nation, Fallout follows Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team in their efforts to prevent a nuclear attack by terrorist Solomon Lane and the mysterious extremist John Lark.

Development on a sequel to Rogue Nation began before its release in 2015. McQuarrie's return marked the first time that anyone would direct more than one film in the series. He intended for Fallout to better explore Ethan's character and emotions, believing previous entries had left him primarily a cypher for audiences, and test the limits of Ethan's abilities, morality, and personal relationships. The script was brief, only 33 pages, serving as an outline driven primarily by the interesting filming locations the production identified and allowing for improvisation and significant changes to scenes throughout filming. Principal photography began in April 2017, on a $178–180 million budget, in Paris, continuing on to London, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Arab Emirates by early 2018. Filming was delayed for several months after Cruise broke his ankle during a stunt, significantly inflating the budget while the production waited for his return, but also provided McQuarrie the opportunity to further develop unfinished scenes in the script.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout premiered in Paris on July 12, 2018, and was theatrically released in the United States on July 27. The film received critical acclaim, with reviewers highlighting its fun and extravagant set pieces and stunts, and received several awards and nominations. It also broke box office records for the series and grossed $791.1 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the Mission: Impossible series and the eighth-highest-grossing film of 2018. Fallout is now generally considered the best or second-best installment in the series, and has been listed by some publications as among the best action or spy films. A sequel, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, was released in 2023, and an eighth film is in development.