Mission: Impossible 6 - What We Know So Far about the movie

Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible franchise is the fine wine of action series; it only gets better with age. It's been over two decades since we first saw Ethan Hunt drop down into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and each of the five Mission: Impossible films has brought something entirely new and endlessly exciting to the table. It doesn't matter if it's an awesome new stunt or a badass new character; each and every installment in this series has carved out a niche for itself and added to the overall Mission: Impossible mythos. On that note, our hopes are currently sky high that Mission: Impossible 6, now officially titled Mission: Impossible - Fallout, can recapture the excellent balance of style and substance when it finally hits theaters.

With that in mind, if you're anything like us, you've probably been searching high and low for any and all relevant bits of information related to this film. Although we don't currently know much about the upcoming sixth installment in the long-running spy series, we have gone through the recent news reports and compiled everything that we now know about the film. Let's start with the (unsurprisingly) action-packed first trailer!

Damn. That looks...Awesome! Mission: Impossible - Fallout is shaping up to be one of the most compelling sequels in recent memory, so let's kick this list off with one of the most important aspects of any movie: its release date.

What Is The Mission: Impossible - Fallout Release Date?
In keeping with the Mission: Impossible franchise's lack of consistent continuity, the release windows between films has similarly never really made much sense. We sometimes get two Mission: Impossible movies within the span of a few years, and other times it can take the better part of a decade. Mission: Impossible 6 will keep its release window on the shorter side for this franchise, as the current release date for the film is slated for July 27, 2018 -- a mere three years after the release of the wildly popular Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation. The franchise is currently riding a hot streak of solid entries, so we will keep our fingers crossed that it can maintain this momentum for the foreseeable future.

Of course, maintaining this release date is largely dependent on one thing at this point: star Tom Cruise staying healthy. During production on Mission: Impossible 6 in mid-August 2017, Cruise broke his ankle while performing a stunt that required him to jump between buildings. While it was thought for a while that his injury would lead to the release date getting pushed back, that didn't happen at the time. The cruise was able to take several weeks off to heal, and director Christopher McQuarrie used the downtime in filming to get to work on editing the movie so there would be less of that to do after production finally wraps.

Seven weeks after his injury, Cruise was back at work on the movie, and in January of 2018 he was already filming stunts again. So, what's the problem, you ask? Well, unfortunately, just a couple of days after he returned to stunt work, it appeared that Cruise may have actually injured himself again. Official word on another injury (or re-injury) hasn't come down yet, so it's still a rumor at this point, but if Cruise is hurt again, this might be the injury that leads to Mission: Impossible - Fallout needing to push back its release date. As of right now, with the production finally releasing a photo of one of the death-defying stunts Cruise took part in, it still seems to be on track to hit its July debut.

What Is The Mission: Impossible - Fallout Rating?
Although the Mission: Impossible franchise has changed and evolved considerably since the first installment in the franchise hit theaters back in 1996, the rating has remained consistent. Misson: Impossible has pretty much always been a franchise that has relied on the tried and true PG-13 rating, and we do not see that changing anytime soon. The rationale makes plenty of sense, as PG-13 allows the Mission: Impossible films to utilize quite a bit of brutality and violent content, while still casting a wide enough net to draw in the largest possible demographic for audiences.

Of course, it is worth noting that other franchises have started to become more and more willing to tinker and toy with the concept of an R-rated blockbuster over the course of the last few years. Movies like Logan and Deadpool have proven that major franchises can still be successful with a more restrictive rating, so it is not completely outside the realm of possibility to think that the Mission: Impossible franchise may one day opt for an R-rated adventure. We just don't think that is going to happen for Mission: Impossible - Fallout.

What Will Mission: Impossible - Fallout Be About?
At this point, no specific plot details for Mission: Impossible - Fallout have been revealed. The series maintains a very loose sense of continuity between films, so it's generally pretty difficult to tell where the franchise will go from one entry to the next. Ethan Hunt and his various teams have prevented nuclear winters, the release of deadly viruses, the funding of secret wars, and even taken down mysterious doomsday devices. Clearly, nothing is off the table for this franchise, so it's anyone's guess as to what type of MacGuffin they will chase down next.

However, with the release of the official title came a plot synopsis that does give us a lot more to go on. Apparently, Mission: Impossible - Fallout will involve a "race against time" after a "mission gone wrong," and director Christopher McQuarrie recently revealed that the subtitle has a dual meaning. Not only will the threat of nuclear terrorism be a focus of the sixth installment in the franchise, but Ethan will also be dealing with "the fallout of all his good intentions," with the plot being driven by "the end result of choices that Ethan Hunt has made in his life."