Tom Cruise Returning For ‘Mission Impossible 4’

While he may look to be beating a dead horse with the upcoming spy comedy Day & Knight, Tom Cruise has announced that he’s returning to the Mission Impossible franchise for a fourth film. From Variety:

Cruise and J.J. Abrams — who co-wrote the “Mission: Impossible III” screenplay — will produce from a screenplay by Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec, a writing duo hired last summer to pen the script from an idea hatched by Cruise and Abrams. Appelbaum and Nemec spent four seasons with Abrams as co-exec producers of “Alias.”

Paramount made the announcement yesterday, along with news that the film’s planed release date will be next Memorial Day. This will put the film out on the same weekend as the planned Hangover sequel, and on the second weekend of the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean film.

The previous Mission Impossible films pulled in just over $1.3 billion, but Cruise’s cost was far too high for Paramount to continue any further films at the time. It seems, with this news, that the studio has decided Cruise is well worth the money spent.

With the film set to hit theaters in just 15 months, you can expect to see casting and script details to leak online by the droves in the coming weeks. We’ll be sure to keep you updated with any information as it comes our way.