Tom Cruise promotes the new ‘Mission Impossible’ Movie

A video of star Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie, seemingly in the middle of filming a midair action sequence for the upcoming eighth Mission: Impossible movie, is being circulated online. The video was originally played before the trailer debut of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One at this year’s CinemaCon in April. The event also hosted the first screening of Top Gun: Maverick.

“I’m sorry for all the extra noise,” Tom Cruise says while crouched on the fuselage of the aircraft thousands of feet up in the clip released online over the weekend.

“As you can see, we are filming the latest installment of ‘Mission Impossible.’

The 59-year-old’s leather jacket can be seen flapping in the wind, and the camera — ostensibly on another nearby aircraft — zooms out to show South Africa’s Blyde River Canyon below.

As another yellow biplane pulls alongside, director Christopher McQuarrie’s voice comes across, telling Cruise that they have to get back to filming.

“We are losing the light and low on fuel,” McQuarrie says.

The minute-long video shows Cruise harnessed to a World War II Boeing-Stearman biplane, delivering a message to theater owners that had gathered at CinemaCon. As he spoke about the importance of the big screen experience, the camera panned out and revealed another plane.

Over the years, the actor has developed a reputation for performing a series of increasingly risky stunts in his films, ranging from climbing the world’s tallest building to being harnessed to the side of an airplane during takeoff. The first trailer for Dead Reckoning Part One has already revealed two show-stopping action sequences — one involving a vintage train, and the other featuring Cruise seemingly driving a motorbike off a cliff.

Cruise has long been a champion of the big screen experience — remember that video of him watching Christopher Nolan’s Tenet during the pandemic? — and made sure that Paramount held on to Maverick despite the interest of several streamers. The studio’s patience paid off, and the film went on to become the biggest hit of 2022, having grossed over $1.42 billion worldwide. It recently became only the sixth movie in history to gross more than $700 million domestically. In addition to this, Cruise also convinced Paramount to pool more money into the two upcoming Mission: Impossible movies, currently slated for release in 2023 and 2024. The Hollywood Reporter carried an in-depth story earlier this year about how Cruise and McQuarrie mounted a back-to-back production, ballooning the seventh film’s budget to nearly $300 million.