Latest news with #MissionImpossible
Forbes
3 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Cannes Film Festival & Market Reaffirms One Persisting Trend
Amy Baker, CEO and co-founder of Winston Baker, speaks to the audience during the 15th International ... More Film Finance Forum in Cannes. Cannes Film Festival represents the epitome of the film festival experience. It boasts old Hollywood glamour (and an even stricter dress code) from one of the most alluring red carpets in the world to larger-than-life premieres like Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning, one of the hottest tickets in this year's lineup, But beyond the silver screen and behind the giant red carpet and gowns, there is a well-attended and robust market centered around the Palais just on the edge of the La Croisette. For nearly two decades, this central meeting hub has provided a space for industry professionals and festival goers alike to educate, discuss and pontificate over networking events, panels and more. Amy Baker, CEO and co-founder of Winston Baker, has led the development of this programming with the company's annual International Film Finance Forum in Cannes in partnership with Marché du Film. Winston Baker is a globally recognized entertainment content curator, specializing in strategic solutions across entertainment finance, music, innovation, sports and various pockets of the industry. And as the 15th annual finance forum, this year's program did not disappoint. Set on the Festival Main Stage, Baker's company led candid conversations with thought leaders, established executives and talent to demystify and predict trends in the ever-changing film marketplace. I had a chance to connect with Baker following the whirlwind market to get her sense of how this year compares in Cannes past. She noted a surprising amount of support for their artificial intelligence (AI) panel which focused on China. 'In years past, that was not as well attended but this year the crowd showed up with real interest.' AI topics still appear to be a charged issue within the industry—especially after the strikes of 2023— as attendees often questioned the panel itself and yet inquired about AI uses. Baker says that while there is a 'strong interest in figuring out the use of AI,' it is still met with skepticism and concern (with enough hope to reinforce that AI in film is not going anywhere). An image of panelists at the 15th Annual International Film Finance Forum in Cannes. After 15 years of hosting this event series, Baker notes that the main change is that the industry 'newbies' now bring fresh materials and greater sophistication than in previous years, thanks to increased access to technology. She is impressed with early creators' sizzle reels and sample artwork that look 'just as good as a studio.' With newcomer trailers matching the level of those screening in the professional sales booth, how does the industry discern and pinpoint where the talent lies? Baker was also excited about the Cannes audience's continued support for disruptors and advancement in her disruptors and advancement in her Shifter(s) Series with The Shift. For instance, Lars Knudsen and Ari Aster, Square Peg co-founders and filmmakers known for horror hits like Hereditary and Midsommar, received wide coverage from the press for their latest film screening at the fest Eddington. While the film industry is contracting, this is one example of how there are still seasoned professionals who continue to reinvent the business and draw in eyes. But we were both amused to find that disruption can sometimes be overlooked or judged. Baker remembers back to 11 years ago when Ted Sarandos, the CEO of Netflix, took the stage at her event and proclaimed that streaming movies would take over distribution, and the audience's skepticism was blatantly apparent. Baker has excelled in providing a forum where new ideas and observations are welcome, and the progressive Cannes Film Festival is especially supportive of her programming. When asked about the viability of Cannes for both seasoned industry vets and newcomers, Baker still believes that this is one of the preeminent festivals and markets as it is always on her radar. Her advice to newcomers is that the human experience of attending these markets still rises above any AI algorithm and there is nothing like 'being there in person to run into people and just talk as you never know who you will meet.' Those who prepare and do their Cannes homework can make the most out of this still relevant human experience where one can meet the past, present and future of filmmaking in one beautiful beach setting. Next up for Baker is the inaugural International Film & Television Finance Forum during the Venice Film Festival in August and another forum at the Busan International Film Festival in September. With the American Film Market (AFM) back in Los Angeles this fall, she is also receptive to that being another great watering hole—not just for selling films, but for bringing the industry together through her company to collectively navigate the future of entertainment.
Globe and Mail
6 hours ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Paramount Stock (NASDAQ:PARA) Notches Up Despite Dueling Lawsuits
The news only got worse for entertainment giant Paramount (PARA), as not only was its big new movie Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning dethroned by an adorable blue furball from Disney (DIS), but news also hit that, should it actually settle its lawsuit with President Trump, it would likely find another one waiting in the wings. This proved less than bothersome for investors, though, as shares notched up fractionally in the closing minutes of Tuesday's trading. Confident Investing Starts Here: Word from the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), which is also a Paramount shareholder, noted much the same thing that a group of senators suggested: settling a lawsuit with President Trump 'could amount to a bribe,' as they would provide this settlement in exchange 'for their approving and not impeding' the merger between Paramount and Skydance. Legal experts, however, have already suggested that this notion is ' a nothing burger ' and largely irrelevant. But the word of those legal experts cut little ice with the FPF, as it planned to '…file a shareholder derivative lawsuit on behalf of Paramount in the event of a settlement by Paramount.' This particular lawsuit would apparently target Shari Redstone, primary shareholder, and the FPF expected '…that other long-term shareholders will join the suit.' Jon Stewart is Concerned Meanwhile, one of the biggest figures of Paramount television, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart of The Daily Show fame, is concerned that the show might face a serious hit as part of any settlement with President Trump. Stewart, in occasionally profane fashion, expressed concerns about the fate of the show citing what happened to 60 Minutes and CBS News. Stewart also cited what happened to a slew of other media properties, before pointing out one other serious sticking point: 'Part of the deal is they have to apologize. And in that moment, these people who have built careers on their excellence and their integrity have to look and go, alright, I hope I've done well enough that I can weather this, but there is no…way that I am going to apologize for doing my job the way it's supposed to be done just because this one guy is offended by it.' Is Paramount Stock a Good Buy Right Now? Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on PARA stock based on two Buys, seven Holds and four Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 0.33% loss in its share price over the past year, the average PARA price target of $12.20 per share implies 1.5% upside potential. See more PARA analyst ratings Disclosure Disclaimer & Disclosure Report an Issue
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Review: ‘Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning'
Opinions are the author's alone and not endorsed by 2 NEWS and/or Nexstar Media Group. DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) — With a subtitle like 'The Final Reckoning,' one could argue that this is the last mission for Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt. While Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie (the director of the last four) have been somewhat vague about that, it seems likely, given how this movie tries to connect the dots between all 8 films. How movies like new 'Mission: Impossible' accurately depict DoD assets In 'Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning,' we see the series at its most bloated, clocking in at 2 hours and 49 minutes. Admittedly, a lot of that runtime seems to be built around tying up plot threads between the films and explaining what Hunt needs to do to take down the 'Entity' — the thing itself being a riff on the dangers of AI. When the movie isn't exposition dumping or memorializing itself though, it features some audacious action set pieces. With next year's Oscars set to include a category for stunts, 'The Final Reckoning' should find itself sitting comfortably among the nominees list. The stunts are always crazy in a Mission Impossible movie, but this 8th entry ratchets them up to an even higher degree. The moments here are full of suspense, assuming that you're not to distracted by the plausibility of them. I found myself wowed by the scale of the stunts, my palms admittedly sweaty over the danger, but I also did ultimately wonder how Hunt would actually survive the encounters. There's also a matter of the characters. Each of them are there seemingly at Hunt's whim. They're not the most fleshed out group of individuals — in fact, they really blend into each other at times. This is prevalent to the point that it does make the final act feel a bit dragged out and weighed down. That act is mainly split between several things going on at the same time. It culminates into a satisfying conclusion, but getting there is a little rocky. The pacing of the film is questionable and the third act is a summation of that I'd say. That said, the final thing I'll note about this film is that it's just really cool to watch at times. The way the shadows wash over the characters or how the camera swings around a given character, either below them for a surprise Dutch angle or for an intense close up, the movie's got style. It's a long, maybe-finale to a series full of literal gravity-defying stunts and action set pieces. It's paced a little awkwardly and asks a lot of the viewer in terms of believability, but I guess all Mission Impossible movies do, so, one could argue — its consistent. Runtime: 2 hours, 49 minutes Rating: PG-13 Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Forbes
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' Had A Post-Credits Scene That Wasn't Filmed, Director Says
Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie on the set of "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning." Christopher McQuarrie said Tom Cruise's new Mission: Impossible movie at one point had a post-credits scene that the duo decided to cut it before it was filmed. What happened to it? McQuarrie, of course, has been the sole director of the last four Mission: Impossible movies, which began with 2015's Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Brian DePalma directed the first Mission: Impossible movie in 1996, followed by John Woo for M:I 2 in 2000, J.J. Abrams for M:I 3 in 2006 and Brad Bird for M:I – Ghost Protocol in 2011. After taking over the series with M:I – Rogue Nation, McQuarrie directed M:I – Fallout in 2018 and M:I – Dead Reckoning in 2023 before the latest – and possibly final — Mission: Impossible chapter with The Final Reckoning. While Cruise and McQuarrie have hinted at but never officially confirmed that Misson: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is indeed the last film, a post-credits credits scene would have certainly given more clarity to the possibility of another chapter. After all, post-credits scenes — as Disney Marvel Cinematic Universe has taught us — generally serve as springboards for sequels or sometimes wrap up loose scenes from earlier action in any given movie. In a recent interview with USA Today, McQuarrie revealed that Mission: Impossible at one point had a post-credits scene, but it only existed on paper. Referring to the post-credits scene as a 'coda'— a term that is generally associated with music as the concluding movement of a composition — the director told the publication that he brought up the idea of scrapping it after showing Cruise what would become the final 10 minutes of the movie. 'I came to Tom and I said, Look, normally I would want you to see the whole movie before I showed this to you, but we're about to shoot this coda in a couple of days and just look at this bit,' ' McQuarrie told USA Today. 'He said, 'You know what, you can cancel Saturday's work because this is the end of the movie. This is it.'' When asked by the publication what the scene entailed, McQuarrie gave an answer that is sure to stir up speculation about another Mission: Impossible movie. 'I'm not going to say because it could end up in another movie,' he told USA Today. Note: The next section includes a spoiler from 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.' Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning's last big action sequence takes place entirely in the air, as Tom Cruise's Impossible Mission Force Agent Ethan Hunt dangerously navigates his position from one bi-plane to another, which is piloted by the malevolent Gabriel (Esai Morales). Ethan needs to put himself in peril to reach Gabriel, who possesses the final piece of the puzzle to stop The Entity — a self-aware artificial intelligence program — from taking over America's nuclear arsenal and starting World War III. The scene concludes with Ethan in a free fall where only a backup parachute can save him from plummeting straight to the earth. McQuarrie told USA Today that Cruise, who had a camera attached to him to help capture the fall, did the stunt 19 times. As it turns out, Cruise's final stunt that viewers get to experience in The Final Reckoning was one that McQuarrie almost made him sick. 'That was gnarly. I would say without question, that was the most nervous I ever was,' McQuarrie told USA Today. 'Every other stunt you're seeing Tom do in this movie, I'm either in front of him or I'm behind him with the camera. 'With that particular stunt, I'm stuck on the ground. Just watching things unfold, there's no way to intervene and you're just watching it happen and you're a little bit helpless in that regard,' the director added. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is playing in theaters worldwide.
The Guardian
14 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Impossibly frustrating: why Mission: Impossible 8 was a major letdown
If the title is sincere, and this really is the final reckoning, then it's been a franchise of two halves. Mission: Impossible diehards tend to underrate the first half (which ran from Brian De Palma's brisk 1996 original to 2011's fun Ghost Protocol) as much as they overrate the second (which launched with 2015's Rogue Nation). Yet the rumbles and grumbles emanating from public screenings suggests a disgruntled consensus is forming around the concluding instalment: that this is an altogether disjointed way to resolve the affairs of Ethan Hunt and his IMF crew, and a shaky way to ignite the movie summer season. Ninety minutes in which nothing happens over and over again, followed by 70 minutes of M:I B-roll. To better diagnose this latest glitch in the Hollywood machine, we need to return to the relighting of the fuse. This was the franchise to which Tom Cruise retreated in the wake of the commercial underperformance of 1999's Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia – the two most rigorous turns of this star's career, films in which Cruise allowed himself to be rattled and seen to be rattled, only to be met with widespread public and awards-circuit indifference. The Mission: Impossibles, by contrast, would be the sort of 4DX-coded sure thing for which audiences have routinely turned out, a creative safe space, even as the films' constituent set pieces pushed their prime mover into performing ever riskier business to ensure bums on seats. In those early films, the character of Hunt was as much martyr and marked man as saviour or secular saint, targeted at every turn by directors with comparably forceful visions. The sensationalist De Palma revelled in the set-up's potential for spectacle; and while, in retrospect, the motorbike-and-mullet combo of 2000's M:I 2, directed by John Woo and set to a bruising Limp Bizkit beat, was bound to date rapidly, the sometime animator Brad Bird, in Ghost Protocol, had the bright idea of turning the series into a live-action cartoon, with Cruise defying gravity and nature alike by hanging off the side of the Burj Khalifa and personally outrunning a sandstorm. The last four films, however, bear the imprint of screenwriter turned director Christopher McQuarrie, who concluded that what this series needed was a little more conversation, overseeing the construction of a vast story framework for his star to dangle off one-handed. That approach reaches its apotheosis in The Final Reckoning, but the scaffolding now overwhelms the spectacle. The attempt to solder eight films together ends in much-rewritten incoherence – see Ving Rhames's confused sendoff – and, worryingly, results in missions being described rather than shown. You wonder whether the insurers blanched after Cruise crocked an ankle shooting 2018's Fallout; now we're left with folks talking at length in nondescript rooms. Is this a Mission: Impossible movie, as advertised, or some M:I-themed podcast? The spectacle, when it tardily follows, is subpar; nothing rivals the train derailment in 2023's Dead Reckoning, which perversely benefitted from McQuarrie's yen for stringing matters out. A soggy deep dive, cramped and claustrophobic, offers another (this time depressurised) chamber piece; during a rote subterranean shootout, we learn world-ending AI generators can apparently be stored in complex cave systems. (I mean, how long's the extension cable?) The biplane conclusion feels more like the M:Is of yore, but chiefly reminds you of Top Gun: Maverick's superior engineering. Too often, McQuarrie has deferred to Cruise and his exhausted stunt coordinators; as a result, the series' bank of memorable images has dwindled. At this length, other flaws become apparent. While the cast expanded once the series set up shop in London, the supporting players now have far less to do, save raise sporadic eyebrows in Hunt's direction. McQuarrie has penned great intros for his women (Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Hayley Atwell), but they're then stranded because Cruise is neither Cary Grant nor Colin Farrell. (Onscreen chemistry remains his most impossible mission.) Making artificial intelligence (AI) the villain in 2025 is a resonant choice, but it's never developed beyond abstract concept; the human big bad (the ever-underused Esai Morales) is an afterthought. Late M:I is mostly All About Tom, or as the credits frame it: Tom Cruise in A Tom Cruise Production. Maybe the star still has enough goodwill in the tank to get the series over the line financially, but creatively, The Final Reckoning is a busted flush: the fact it's been outperformed on opening weekend by a live-action Lilo & Stitch seems in some way telling. For his part, Cruise has earned the right to stand alone and unbowed atop the BFI Imax like the world's most celebrated Antony Gormley figure; his stardom has only been reaffirmed over the course of the past quarter-century. But it's a problem when your publicity stunts generate punchier images than anything in the film you're promoting. That long-lit fuse flickered out before it reached the explosives; and in any event, the gelignite has been swapped for flannel and waffle.
