Tom Cruise in Cannes: a five-minute ovation for 'Final Reckoning'
The premiere of 'Mission: Impossible, The Final Reckoning' was held on May 14 at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, where Tom Cruise received a five-minute ovation, The Hollywood Reporter writes.
Tom Cruise drew an almost five-minute ovation after the premiere of “Mission: Impossible, The Final Reckoning” at the 78th Cannes Film Festival on May 14, The Hollywood Reporter writes from the venue. The film screened out of competition, with its commercial release following immediately after the festival slot.
After the ovation in the Grand Theatre Lumiere, Cruise turned to director Christopher McQuarrie and told him he is “looking forward to making a bunch of other kinds of films with you”, a remark festival reporters read as the door opening on his exit from the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. According to the same report, this is the eighth installment of the series, in which Cruise, as the producer himself noted, is playing Ethan Hunt “for the last time”.
The film was directed by McQuarrie from his own screenplay co-written with Erik Jendresen, as a direct continuation of “Dead Reckoning Part One” from 2023. The ensemble includes Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny and Angela Bassett. The commercial release in global theaters followed one week after Cannes.
A few hours before the premiere, McQuarrie told The Hollywood Reporter that Cruise, who performs all his own stunts, at one point during the shoot pushed the risk too far. According to McQuarrie, the crew thought the 62-year-old actor had lost consciousness during a sequence in which he was flying a biplane solo, which makes Cruise one of the few major stars still working at this level of physical action without a stunt double.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood analysts see this year’s Cannes selection and Tom Cruise’s appearance as part of a trend in which studio blockbusters are once again seeking the prestige of the festival stage, after years of dominance by exclusive streaming premieres. Cruise’s next production is announced for 2027, with McQuarrie back in the director’s chair but, as the actor himself suggests, in a different genre.
The commercial performance of “Final Reckoning” in its opening weekend exceeded Paramount’s expectations, with a reported global start of over $200 million, per data from Rotten Tomatoes and specialized box-office portals. The production budget, which unnamed studio sources put at between $300 million and $400 million, makes the film one of the most expensive in the franchise’s history and one of Paramount’s most ambitious projects of the past decade.
Cruise’s departure from the role of Ethan Hunt, after nearly three decades in the same character, is one of the biggest shifts for American franchise production, with the announcement that Paramount is preparing a spin-off series in which Hunt’s character will have minimal presence and new characters will take the main arc. According to the same paper, the name of the next lead character will be unveiled during 2027.
After Cannes, in several interviews including a conversation with the Jordan Times, Cruise said that, in addition to the new project with McQuarrie, he is planning a multi-month break during 2026 that he will use to prepare for a military pilot’s license, part of his long-running aviation passion. The specific type of aircraft he plans to pilot, he added, will be announced once the training program is finalized.
