“Hit Man” and “Twisters” star Glen Powell has been pretty clear about wanting to model his career after Tom Cruise, his co-star in the mega-hit “Top Gun: Maverick.” Cruise became a mentor figure to Powell, and if a new rumor is to be believed, he could be poised to make his career trajectory look even more like Cruise’s. On the heels of the first trailer for “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” which strongly implies that the movie will be the end of the line for Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and this era of the whole franchise, newsletter writer Jeff Sneider claims Cruise has already hand-picked Powell to take over the “Mission” movies going forward.
During an episode of The Pat McAfee Show, McAfee called Powell during a live broadcast to congratulate him about the “news.” Powell’s reaction over the phone was swift (and pretty funny): “My mom would never let me do that. That’s the worst gig in town, everybody knows that. That’s a death trap!”
Powell has a great relationship with his parents, and he’s worked them into several of his movies as background performers, so it’s natural he would diffuse a rumor by citing how his mom would feel about him taking the gig. But the language is vague enough that he didn’t outright say the rumor wasn’t true, either. But even he is being eyed to take over, there’s one hurdle he’d have to leap to make it actually happen.
Will Tom Cruise ever actually hand off the Mission franchise?
For those who have been following movie news for a long time, whispers about succession in the “Mission” franchise might sound somewhat familiar to you. There were rumors around the time of 2011’s “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” that Cruise would be passing the baton to Jeremy Renner’s character, Brandt. For a while, this was one of those unspoken stories that people didn’t want to go on the record about, but in 2019, cinematographer Robert Elswit confirmed the “Mission” rumors and explained that in an early version of the “Ghost Protocol” script, Ethan Hunt was supposed to end the movie as the IMF Secretary and a new agent would take over the franchise. Obviously, though, Cruise wasn’t interested in stepping back, and he’s continued to lead the property ever since.
Cruise is 62 years old now, so at this stage it’s probably more likely that he’d be willing to pass this franchise along to another actor. On the other hand, though, this is Tom Cruise we’re talking about. The man is absolutely obsessed with pushing the envelope for audiences and delivering incredible, tactile stunts that no other actor would dream of doing. I’ve seen nothing to indicate that Cruise is interested in slowing down any time soon, so unless “The Final Reckoning” ends with an emotional death for Ethan Hunt (similar to what happened with Daniel Craig’s James Bond in “No Time to Die”), I can’t imagine him willingly handing the reins to anyone, even a protégé like Powell. Choosing a successor could be the best thing for the franchise at this point, but if “The Final Reckoning” is a hit, I wouldn’t expect to see Ethan go quietly into the night.
We spoke a little about this on today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:
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