Director Christopher McQuarrie is currently working to up the ante for the sixth installment of Paramount’s Mission: Impossible franchise. In the meantime, McQuarrie is also being poised to helm the forthcoming live-action adaptation, Star Blazers, according to the latest report at Deadline.
The film is a nod to its origins as Space Battleship Yamato which had a raft of series runs airing in Japan beginning in 1974 from director Matsumoto Leji. Set in the year 2199, the series centered on mankind’s efforts to fashion a lightspeed battleship underground with superior technology during the course of their survival following a deadly alien attack that rendered the Earth’s surface uninhabitable.
Plans to adapt its Americanized program, Star Blazers, began as far back as the 1990s at Disney before those plans were scrapped thereafter, while Returner helmer, award-winning director Yamazaki Takashi managed to bring forward his own adaptation in 2010. David Ellison then arose plans for its live-action development at Skydance back in 2011, a few years before McQuarrie would reportedly committed to the project.
For the time being, McQuarrie is to be joined for the tentatively-titled Mission: Impossible 6 with a cast that includes Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill among its TBA cast listing. Production is slated for next month with a release slated for next July, and with locations in New Zealand to be included in the film.