Tom Cruise has confirmed to Empire that Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Ratatouille) has signed on to make his live-action directorial debut with Mission: Impossible IV. Yay?
I’ve been of two minds on this since word first came that Brad Bird was considering the job. On the one hand, Mission: Impossible is a tired franchise that in my opinion has only produced one good film thus far, that being the first. Brad Bird is a fantastic filmmaker and what I really want is to see him keep making original movies dear to his heart, like his three animated films and the the big live-action movie about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that he’s been trying to get produced. A franchise film, and one so important to Tom Cruise and Paramount, thus invoking control issues, seems beneath him. On the other hand, it’s true that he’s had a tough time getting Warner Bros to commit to the massive budget 1906 requires without making significant script concessions, so if proving himself on Mission: Impossible IV and having a profitable live-action blockbuster on his resume helps secure the funding for future endeavors, perhaps that’s for the best.
Since it doesn’t matter what I think and Brad Bird has made his decision, I hope he knocks this out of the park. I also hope he gets to put his own spin on the script that Josh Applebaum and Andre Nemec having been writing based off a story by J.J. Abrams. I trust the man who wrote The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille a million times more than Abrams and his proteges. Abrams is also producing Mission: Impossible IV though, so his mark will surely be present. At the very least, Brad Bird’s proven he can direct some seriously good action sequences in animated form, so hopefully that translates to live-action. I still think the airplane sequence in The Incredibles is among the most intense sequences of the last ten years from all film.
Best of luck to Brad Bird with this endeavor, in making the switch to live-action, and in dealing with a studio franchise and all the baggage that comes with his lead actor.
Mission: Impossible IV has been given a release date of December 16th, 2011.
