'Mission: Impossible 7' sets shut down again due to Covid

According to reports, 14 members of the production tested positive after shooting a nightclub scene

LONDON:

Filming in Britain on the latest Mission: Impossible movie has been shut down for two weeks after some people working on the movie tested positive for the coronavirus, Paramount Pictures said on Thursday.

The movie studio did not say who or how many people had tested positive but Britain's Sun newspaper said star Tom Cruise was not among them.

"We have temporarily halted production on Mission: Impossible 7 until June 14th, due to positive coronavirus test results during routine testing. We are following all safety protocols and will continue to monitor the situation," Paramount said in a statement.

The Sun newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said 14 members of the production tested positive after shooting a nightclub scene, and that Cruise, like other people working on the set, would have to self-isolate for 14 days.

A spokesperson for Cruise, who is also a producer on the action film, did not immediately return a call for comment. Mission: Impossible is one of the biggest franchises in Hollywood. The seventh film in the series was one of the first movies to shut down production because of the pandemic when it abandoned filming in Venice, Italy in February 2020.

Shooting resumed last year in countries including Norway, Italy and Britain. Cruise was caught on audiotape last December yelling at the crew over breaches in COVID safety protocols.

In February this year, a planned three-week shoot in Italy for Tom Cruise’s new Mission: Impossible film was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. 

“Out of an abundance of caution for the safety and well-being of our cast and crew, and efforts of the local Venetian government to halt public gatherings in response to the threat of coronavirus, we are altering the production plan for our three-week shoot in Venice, the scheduled first leg of an extensive production for Mission: Impossible 7,” Paramount Pictures, a unit of ViacomCBS, had said in a statement at that time

Mission: Impossible 7 is due to be released in May 2022.

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