Maybe Nicholas Hoult will be the one to finally kill Tom Cruise in the next Mission: Impossible?
A lot of very competent bad guys have tried and failed to kill Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt over the course of the Mission: Impossible series, most recently Sean Harris’ Solomon Lane, Henry Cavill’s evil mustache, and that ledge that destroyed Cruise’s ankle, but maybe Nicholas Hoult will be able to succeed where those bad guys failed? According to Variety, he’ll be playing the villain in director Christopher McQuarrie’s next Mission: Impossible movie, with McQuarrie announcing the news on Instagram. Nobody explicitly said he’s going to be the villain, but the Instagram post involved McQuarrie asking Hoult if he wanted to “raise a little hell” with Hoult responding “Love to, though why stop at a little?” which either means they’re about to have a truly epic Boys Night or Hoult is playing a M:I bad guy. Or maybe both?
Variety says this all stems from Hoult’s audition to play Goose Jr. in Top Gun: Maverick (his callsign is apparently actually “Rooster” even though that’s a totally different bird), and while that role ended up going to Miles Teller, Cruise reportedly liked Hoult enough that he wanted to work with him at some point. Unfortunately for Cruise, that desire will soon be his undoing—assuming Hoult has the villainous chops to employ both an evil mustache and a tricky ledge that Cruise has to jump on. He won’t stand a chance.