Katy O'Brian has accepted her mission to join the cast of the eighth (and final?) instalment in Paramount Pictures and Skydance's Mission: Impossible franchise.
Details on O'Brian's role are still under wraps, but there's already speculation that she might be playing the main villain. Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt has faced off against women in the past, but this would be the first time he's encountered a female primary antagonist.
Of course, the character could just as easily end up being an ally of Hunt and his team.
O'Brian had small but memorable supporting roles in Marvel Studios' Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Disney+'s The Mandalorian, before garnering a lot of attention for her more recent co-lead turn in violent thriller Love Lies Bleeding alongside Kristen Stewart.
Plot details for Mission 8 also remain a mystery, but the movie is still expected to serve as a direct follow-up to Dead Reckoning, despite recently dropping the "Part 2" sub-title.
In addition to Cruise, Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Hayley Atwell, Shea Whigham, and Pom Klementieff are all expected to return. Other new recruits include Holt McCallany, Nick Offerman, Janet McTeer and Hannah Waddingham.
Despite rumors to the contraray, Rebecca Ferguson is not expected to reprise her role as Isla Faust after being killed off in the previous film.
Christopher McQuarrie will return to the director's chair, and also penned the script. He is producing alongside Cruise, with David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger and Chris Brock serving as exec producers.
This was originally envisioned as the final film in the franchise, but McQuarrie has since indicated that he might have a few more missions left in him.
Mission: Impossible 8 was previously set to debut on June 28th of this year, but following a strikes-related delay, will now hit theaters on May 23, 2025.
What do you make of this casting news? Are you looking forward to the new Mission: Impossible movie? Drop us a comment down below.
"Ethan Hunt and the IMF team must track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity if it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than the mission -- not even the lives of those he cares about most."