You would think Paramount would’ve learned some painful lessons after the debacle of "World War Z" a couple years back, which went through a tumultuous production that saw weeks of reshoots to try and fix a movie that probably should’ve addressed the very issues that arose long before filming had started. And now, the studio faces more trouble with another blockbuster, "Mission: Impossible V" (which it’s apparently being called, Roman numeral and all). And the stakes are even highter. The studio just moved the movie up from its originally planned Christmas Day release to the middle of the summer, but there’s just one thing: it needs an ending.
THR reports that with five months to go until its supposed to open, production has been shut down on the currently filming tentpole, so Christopher McQuarrie and co. can figure out a new ending. A new writer and friend of McQuarrie’s — who will apparently remain unidentified and unpaid even — is being brought in to help to craft a new finale. One source says McQuarrie is "scrambling" (which we’d understand if a studio just shaved half a year off your post-production schedule and then told you to reshoot the ending to your movie) while another inside spins a more happy tale.
"Chris, Tom [Cruise] and a third person wanted to take a minute to get from what they thought was a good place to a more perfect place," they tell the trade.
Paramount got tremendously lucky with "World War Z," and even more, they pushed back the release date to make sure it was just right. The result? A hit that has a sequel brewing. Here it seems like they want to play with fire, with the clock ticking on mounting the kind of campaign a "Mission: Impossible" movie warrants, not to mention that the actual movie needs to be finished too. (And I’m seriously wondering how the VFX are going to look with this time crunch).
Surely, lots more to come. "Mission: Impossible 5" is still slated to arrive on July 31st.
