Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is a 2018 American action spy film written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. It is the sequel to Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) and the sixth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. The ensemble cast includes 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 (Harris) and the mysterious extremist John Lark.

Work on a sequel to Rogue Nation commenced before its 2015 release. The series' first returning director, McQuarrie intended for Fallout to better explore Ethan's character and emotions, believing previous entries had left him primarily a cipher for audiences, and to 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 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 providing 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 garnered universal acclaim, particularly for its standout setpieces, and received several awards. 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 was followed by two sequels: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025).