Esai Morales replaces Nicholas Hoult as the villain for Mission: Impossible 7 and 8

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a massive impact on movie production around the world. One of the most high-profile movies that was delayed early was not one but two Mission Impossible sequels. The two-part production which was supposed to see MI:7 and MI:8 filmed back-to-back was put on hold when the pandemic initially affected Italy quite severely, leaving them to put filming on hold as the film had many scenes around the Italian peninsula and Venice in particular.

There have since been plans to revise those scenes so that they can be shot elsewhere, with Italy still not yet open to film productions, but the delays have now resulted in another casualty as director Christopher McQuarrie has announced that Esai Morales (Ozark) has been cast as the film’s villain, replacing Nicholas Hoult who is unable to continue in the role due to scheduling conflicts.

This change is ultimately a blow for Hoult, but with McQuarrie urgently trying to find ways of making these movies as soon as possible one can only assume Hoult hadn’t actually filmed many of his scenes to enable them to make this change without disrupting things too severely. Having said that, even if some of the production can resume in the UK soon it will still prove quite a challenge to get these films shot with all the different regulations and restrictions now in place.

As for the reason why McQuarrie wanted to make the next MI film a two-parter, he revealed in a recent interview the desire to use the extra time to go further into the lives of different characters rather than just focusing on Cruise’s Ethan Hunt.

Going into this, I said, ‘I want to take what we learned from Fallout and apply it to every character in the movie

As for the rest of the film’s cast, it seems like all the major stars such as Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Simon Pegg, and Ving Rhames remain committed to the project, along with newcomers Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Shea Whigham. If all goes according to plan, we will see MI:7 releasing in November 2021, with MI:8 coming out a year later.

Last Updated: May 22, 2020