Tom Cruise's 'Mission: Impossible 6' Stunt Will ''Top Anything That's Come Before''

UPDATE: Director Christopher McQuarrie has clarified this story just a bit:

The Mission: Impossible movies don't need city-leveling CGI set pieces or characters created entirely through motion capture. They already have the greatest special effect of all time. That special effect is called Tom Cruise. Ageless, fearless, and seemingly built in a laboratory to withstand stunts that would have (sane) actors calling for their doubles, Cruise has upped the ante with each Mission: Impossible movie, finding new and exciting ways to risk his life for the sake of our "Oohs" and "Aahs." He will one day die on a movie set at the age of 91, looking like he's 45, with a smile on severed head. He probably tried to surf on a helicopter blade.

Anyway, Mission: Impossible 6 will apparently feature a stunt so extreme that Cruise trained for a year so he could pull it off.

Collider spoke with Skydance Media CEO and Mission: Impossible series producer David Ellison, who explained that sixth film in the series is going out of its way to top the insane, show-stopping stunts seen in the previous two movies:

We're thrilled. [director Christopher McQuarrie] is back, obviously, writing and directing after Rogue Nation. We could not be more excited about the character Henry Cavill's going to play. And I will say after the Burj [Khalifa] we thought it was going to be impossible to top that stunt, and then Tom did the A380 for the plane. What Tom is doing in this movie I believe will top anything that's come before. It is absolutely unbelievable—he's been training for a year. It is going to be, I believe, the most impressive and unbelievable thing that Tom Cruise has done in a movie, and he has been working on it since right after Rogue Nation came out. It's gonna be mind-blowing.

It's too early to even predict what Cruise is planning to do to himself this time around. We do know that Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation director Christopher McQuarrie is back (making him the first director in the series to return for another movie) and that Superman himself, Henry Cavill, will play a role in the movie. Filming begins on April 10, 2017, with the production hopping between Paris, London, and New Zealand.

In the meantime, we can only stare at YouTube videos of past Mission: Impossible stunt sequences and ponder what else they're cooking up. The Burj Khalifa sequence from Ghost Protocol is rightfully famous and still so freakin' exciting six years later.

The opening sequence of Rogue Nation, where Cruise clings to the side of an airplane as it takes off, didn't hit popular culture with quite as much force, but it's still a jaw-dropping set piece worthy of admiration.

For my money, the best sequence in the entire series is the motorcycle chase through the Moroccan highways in Rogue Nation, mainly because everything is moving sooo fast and McQuarrie positions his camera to make sure you recognize that Cruise himself is on that bike.

Mission: Impossible 6 is set to open on July 27, 2018.