Director Christopher McQuarrie has explained the meaning behind the title for the upcoming seventh installment in the action franchise, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, revealing that the ominous subtitle refers to all the characters – not just Ethan Hunt. Speaking with the Light the Fuse Podcast, McQuarrie revealed his thinking behind the Dead Reckoning title, and how it helped shape what are expected to be the final two parts of Ethan Hunt’s story.

While Mission: Impossible 7 was almost given an entirely different title, McQuarrie ultimately decided to name movies 7 and 8 as Parts One and Two and thus allow Dead Reckoning to drape over both outings.

“When I came up with the title, I knew it applied more to Part Two than it did to Part One, which is why it eventually settled on being Part One and Part Two. The title for the first movie was nearly … a title that referred to something like a Ghost Protocol kind of thing, it was a government policy – It wasn’t a government policy, it was a government, what would you call it? A government measure of last resort, with catastrophic consequences. By the time we got to the end of Part One, that had distilled down into an entirely different set of circumstances that appear in Part Two and not in Part One. So, the word would no longer have been appropriate for the title of Part One.”

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     Paramount Pictures

Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One stars Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Frederick Schmidt, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Esai Morales, Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss, Cary Elwes, and Holt McCallany.

“And yet, Dead Reckoning didn’t really apply as well to Part One as well as it did to Part Two until we started to play with the beginning of the movie, and kind of recognize that Dead Reckoning, while it sounded cool, what did it really have to do with the movie? And over the course of our, really starting to dig down into the arc of the character journey for Ethan [Hunt], it took on deeper and deeper meanings as we went. And you’ll see just how thematic and how it represents, how it’s conceptually represented in every character’s journey in this film we’re in.”

While plot details for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One continue to remain a closely guarded secret, the recent trailer has teased the action on display. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Parts One and Two are expected to bring Ethan Hunt’s journey to an end, with reports even claiming that Part One will end on a cliffhanger. Christopher McQuarrie however has hinted that this may not exactly be the case…

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is scheduled for release in the United States on July 14, 2023 by Paramount Pictures. The final sequel, Dead Reckoning Part Two, is scheduled to be released on June 28, 2024.