Actor Jeremy Renner really went through it, obviously in early 2023. Coming close with a brush with death in a freak snowplow accident, almost less than a year later, he was back at work filming season three of the Taylor Sheridan crime series, “Mayor Of Kingtown.” Now that ‘Kingstown’ has debuted on Paramount+ this past Sunday, Renner has been doing the press rounds discussing his survival, the show, and so much more.
Renner tackled all the subjects in his recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, his road to recovery, the ideas of mortality, finding comfort in horror movies during his healing, and more. But one thing that jumped out in the conversation was Renner revealing that the filmmakers behind ‘Mission Impossible,’ presumably Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie, wanted him to come back briefly to shoot for a week and then kill off his character.
Renner recently revealed that he’d be open to returning to the ‘Mission: Impossible’ series. However, in this new interview, he outlined why that’s still very difficult: in short scheduling and the amount of time it takes to make a ‘Mission’ film (for what it’s worth, Christopher McQuarrie has said the same thing about Paula Patton who he wants to return to the franchise someday too). Before going into deeper details, he explained why making a ‘Mission’ film is still very difficult for him.
“The way [those movies] are filmed is that there’s these giant set pieces, and they start to write the film around these set pieces,” he explained. “Tom will be working on this stunt for a long time, and they’ll build a story around these set pieces, so there’s no schedule, so I can’t go out for a year and a half; I gotta go be a dad… So I was landlocked out here; I couldn’t film overseas anymore,” he said, alluding to the fact that he shares custody of his child with his ex-wife, her mother, in the U.S., and thus can’t jet off halfway across the planet to shoot a ‘Mission” movie for months at a time.
“If I were single, I’d probably still be doing those films,” he added. “Maybe when my daughter is older, maybe there’s more of an opportunity to do something” (and reader, that might mean waiting til she is 18, an adult; currently, she’s 11).
Renner then added after ‘Rogue Nation,’ his first and only ‘Mission’ movie, the filmmakers asked him to come back briefly and shoot a death scene for his character, but he said forget it.
“They also—I remember they tried to bring me over[seas] for a week so they could kill my character, and I was like, ‘No, you don’t get to do that. You’re not going to drag me over there and just kill my character,’ like get out of here!” If you’re going to do this and you’re going to use my character, you’re going to do it right,” he laughed.
“I yelled at Chris[topher McQuarrie],” he chuckled. “Dude, you’re not going to do this to me like that; you’re not going to do me wrong.”
Renner confirmed this idea was originally for “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” the sixth film in the franchise and the one after ‘Rogue Nation,’ Renner’s only franchise appearance thus far.
As for the rumors that Renner’s “Mission Impossible” debut in ‘Rogue Nation’ was initially meant to set him up as the new star of the franchise—which was the big to-do reports of the day— with Cruise handing the baton off to him, Renner downplayed the idea (though note: cinematographer Robert Elswit confirmed this was indeed once the plan on the Light The Fuse podcast a few years back)
“No, it was always Tom’s show, that would be a Tom decision, if he ever wanted to change that narrative,” Renner said. “And as he’s maturing as an actor, he kinda wants to hold on, he’s doing ‘Top Gun’ again, right? He’s rebooting that, and let’s [lean] into the things in his life that he’s comfortable with now.”
Renner explained that Cruise is doing well and ‘Mission Impossible’ is more or less a billion-dollar franchise (not quite, but you know what he means), and maybe the day will come when he’ll want to pass it off. “So maybe when [his hit franchises] calm down…. Maybe, right? But the guy’s a beast and works harder than anyone I know,” he said, suggesting a retirement isn’t coming any time soon.
In summation, however, and if you watch the whole clip, it doesn’t sound like Renner’s going to be able to take on a full ‘Mission Impossible’ film any time soon, given the shared custody situation and having to stay close in the U.S. (it’s the same reason you haven’t seen Brad Pitt take an overseas role in years). In the interim, “Mayor Of Kingstown” is on Paramount+ now, and “Mission Impossible 8” is due in the summer of 2025. Watch the full interview below.
