The Mission Impossible franchise got a huge boosts in the caboose with the Brad Bird directed sequel Ghost Protocol. The fans that had stayed away from the third entry in the series, came back in droves to see a film that boasted some of the finest stunt scenes captured on screen in a decade. But it looks like Brad Bird wasn't planning on sticking around for the fifth as he tells Collider.
“No, I think that one of the things that’s fun about the series is that they always pull in a different director and try to get a different kind of take on the premise. I’d probably be open to looking at it, but I think that part of one of the successes of the franchises is that they’re always reassessing it with a new director.”
Also of note, is that Brad Bird originally planned to have actress Michelle Monaghan, who played Ethan Hunt's wife in the third movie, and made a cameo in the fourth, die at the end.
“Well, we were well into the film thinking that she had been killed, and filmed quite a bit of the film thinking that she wasn’t around, and we just kept thinking that that kind of cast the previous movie in a negative light because it’s kind of like all that stuff that he went through to keep her alive in the last one didn’t ultimately amount to anything.”
Thank goodness he changed his mind. Bird points out that he came to that conclusion when cast member Simon Pegg used
Aliens 3 as an example. Which is a great examples, because if you remember James Cameron's second film in the franchise
Aliens put Ripley through hell, and she survives with Michael Bien, and the actress playing Newt. But, when we get to the third movie we see both of Sigourney Weaver's co-stars dead. As if everything in the second film had meant nothing, very frustrating.
Directed by Brad Bird and starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Josh Holloway, Simon Pegg, Tom Wilkinson and Michael Nyqvist, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.