Christopher McQuarrie teases new cast member for 'MI: 7&8'

Filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie has confirmed the return of Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby and Simon Pegg for his two back-to-back "Mission: Impossible" films, whilst teasing also about an "exciting casting coup".

Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt for the seventh and eighth installments of the long-running franchise that are being helmed by McQuarrie.

During his virtual appearance with Pegg and new cast member Hayley Atwell on podcast"Light the Fuse", the director made it official that Ferguson, Rhames and Kirby will reprise their characters of Ilsa Faust, Luther Stickell and Alanna Mitsopolis aka the White Widow, respectively.

He also teased that the cast will be joined by a new member, whose identity he chose not to reveal.

"There is someone we were talking to before the world blew up. An actor I was very excited about. I don't know where that is, because we had talked days before (the shutdown) and it was an incredibly exciting casting coup," McQuarrie said.

The filmmaker, who previously helmed 2015's "Rogue Nation" and "Fallout" (2018), also explained the rationale behind making two consecutive films in the franchise.

"When we went into making'Fallout;, I said to Tom, 'I really want to make this more of an emotional journey for Hunt,'. Going into this, I said, 'I want to take what we learned from'Fallout'and apply it to every character in the movie. I want everyone to have an emotional arc. ... I just want the movie to have more feeling across the board," McQuarrie said.

"We realised we had a movie that was two hours, 40 minutes long. And every scene in it was necessary," he added.

According to McQuarrie, the two filmswere made of 20-minute segments and after removing two of them, he cracked the idea for the seventh film.

"The ending of the first movie snapped into place. We knew what the ending was and we knew what the beginning was. And now I had these two sequences, which means, I've got 40 minutes of'Mission: Impossible 8'figured out," he added.

The director also talked about the character being played by Atwell, best known for starring in Marvel Cinematic Universe as Peggy Carter.

"In this (film), we've found something really, really great for the core team. What I can tell you is that they then encounter this other destructive force of nature in the form of Hayley," McQuarrie said.

Paramount Pictures recently pushed the release dates of the two movies due to the pandemic.

The seventh and eighth chapters were scheduled to be released on July 23, 2021, and August 5, 2022, respectively.

The two sequels will now hit the theatres on November 19, 2021 and November 4, 2022.