MOVIE NEWS – Co-writer/director Christopher McQuarrie explains how his adaptation of Mission: Impossible 7’s main villain Nicholas Hoult changed the whole film.

Attention! SPOILERS for the first part of Mission: Impossible – Lethal Showdown!

Despite the high stakes of The Ultimate Adversary, co-writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has revealed that the reworking of the main villain from the first part of Mission: Impossible – Return of the Dead has caused the entire film to be changed. In the latest instalment of the hit action movie series, Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is pitted against a villain from his past named Gabriel, who is trying to gain complete control of a mysterious artificial intelligence called The Entity. Originally, Nicholas Hoult was cast as the main antagonist in the split Dead Reckoning storyline, but Hoult’s scheduling conflicts meant he would be replaced by Ozark’s Esai Morales.

Following the film’s celebrated release, Christopher McQuarrie appeared on the latest episode of the Script Apart podcast to discuss the first part of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. Reflecting on the sequel’s lengthy development process, the co-writer/director spoke about Nicholas Hoult’s reworking of the original villain and revealed that the Renfield star’s casting was taken from a failed Top Gun: Maverick audition where Cruise still enjoyed the effort, although his exit due to pandemic caused the entire film to be changed. McQuarrie shared this:

“The Entity didn’t exist when the story started. In fact, [the side villain] Gabriel didn’t exist either. We originally chose Nick Hoult to be the villain in our film because [lead actor and producer] Tom [Cruise] really liked Nick Hoult in his audition for Top Gun: Maverick… [Cruise] didn’t think he was right for that movie, but he recognized that [Hoult] was an extremely talented actor. And so we chose Nick based solely on that, not really knowing where our story was going. [It would have been a completely different movie if the epidemic hadn’t taken Nick out of the running. We replaced Nick with Esai Morales, who I’d seen in Ozark – I thought she was a very good villain. It opened up a world of possibilities about [lead character] Ethan [Hunt]’s past, because Esai and Tom are roughly the same age… it opened a door to a story we still didn’t understand.”

Source: Screenrant