Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie has admitted he initially planned to de-age Tom Cruise in one sequence from the latest film in the franchise.
Christopher has helmed three films in the hit action series, including Dead Reckoning Part One, which is now in cinemas.
Speaking to GamesRadar ahead of the movie’s release, the filmmaker shared that he’d initially hoped to set a prologue scene in 1989, using AI technology to de-age the franchise’s leading man.
However, he ultimately ditched these plans as he found such scenes in other films a little on the distracting side.
“Originally, there had been a whole sequence at the beginning of the movie that was going to take place in 1989,” he explained.
“We talked about it as a cold open. We talked about it as flashbacks in the movie. We looked at de-aging.
“One of the big things about [the de-aging] I was looking at while researching, I kept saying, ‘Boy, this de-aging is really good’ or ‘This de-aging is not so good.’ Never did I find myself actually following the story.”
Christopher added: “I was so distracted by an actor that I had known for however long was now suddenly this young person.”
Eventually, he “cracked the code” on “how best to approach it”, but by then had “moved away from” the idea.
“We may still play with it,” he insisted. “We never say never.”
De-aging tech has recently been used in the Oscar-nominated Netflix drama The Irishman, the Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian and the latest Indiana Jones film, The Dial Of Destiny.
Dead Reckoning Part One sees Mission: Impossible regulars Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson and Simon Pegg joined by newcomer to the franchise, Hayley Atwell.
As the name suggests, a follow-up film is in the works, although it is currently on hold due to the ongoing writers’ strike in America.
Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One is in cinemas now.