Following a tease last week, Deadline has unearthed information on a few mystery projects Tom Cruise and director/writer Christopher McQuarrie are hoping to start work on after they wrap on Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two.
That aforementioned eighth chapter in the Mission franchise is expected to continue filming until October of next year, so it'll likely be a while before we hear anything more on any of these projects, but according to DHD, the dynamic duo are in the early stages of developing an original action film with franchise potential, an original song and dance-style musical, and something involving Cruise's breakout Tropic Thunder character Les Grossman.
It's unclear whether that third project would be that long-rumored spinoff centered on the character or if he'd be included in one of the other films, but the main takeaway is that the two have Les Grossman on their mind and that's certainly good news for us all.
Cruise will star in and produce each project while McQuarrie is expected to write all three scripts. Whether he directs remains to be seen, but it's likely he'll be at the helm of, at least, one of the projects.
As Top Gun: Maverick continues to reach new box office milestones by the day, Cruise is setting quite an exciting slate for 2024 and beyond. He has both Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One and Part Two due out in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and is also expected to begin filming another hotly-awaited actioner next year, his mystery space project with NASA and SpaceX, which has Doug Liman directing and McQuarrie attached as a producer.