Christopher McQuarrie Explains Jeremy Renner’s Absence From ‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout’

Over the years, fans have come to love the cast members of the “Mission: Impossible” films. Leading the way is the duo of Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames, who have been there since the beginning. And in the later films, they’re joined by Simon Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson. However, if you’ve been watching all the trailers and TV spots for the upcoming “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” and wondered why something was missing, it’s because the latest film is noticeably absent of any Jeremy Renner.

The actor has appeared in the last two ‘M:I’ movies, ‘Ghost Protocol’ and ‘Rogue Nation,’ but isn’t around for the team’s latest adventure. Did Renner piss off writer-director Christopher McQuarrie? Did he turn down Tom Cruise’s Scientology pitch? Or maybe he broke more limbs, as he’s recently known to do? Sadly, the real answer is more logistical. You see,  appearing in ‘Fallout’ would have been impossible for Renner. (See what I did there?)

In an interview with Digital Spy, McQuarrie answers the question “Where’s Hawkeye…err…Jeremy Renner?”

“At the time, when the movie started, we didn’t really have a screenplay, so it was very difficult for us to say who would be in the movie for how long and on what days, and he had a commitment to Marvel. So there was just simply no predicting. If we had a finished script, we would have been able to say, ‘Yes, this will work and we can let you go for this time’, but there was just no predicting what those roles were going to turn out to be. It was just an unfortunate case of bad timing.”

Perhaps in a few years, when his Marvel days are in the rearview mirror, we’ll see Renner come back to his “Mission: Impossible” family. However, for the film that’s coming out in just over a week, the actor is sadly going to have to sit this mission out.