EXCLUSIVE: After wowing with her muscular turn in A24’s Love Lies Bleeding, Kaity O’Brian has joined the cast of the eighth Mission: Impossible for Paramount Pictures and Skydance, sources tell Deadline.
Details as to the plot of the latest spy actioner in the series remain under wraps, as does her role. But it follows up Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, which grossed over $567MM worldwide last summer and landed a pair of Oscar nominations for Best Sound and Visual Effects.
The Mission: Impossible films center on Cruise’s Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt, who with his team, has embarked on assorted globe-trotting missions to avert global disaster. Cruise is set to reprise, as are Ving Rhames, Henry Czerny, Simon Pegg, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Hayley Atwell, Shea Whigham, and Pom Klementieff. Other newcomers to the franchise aboard for the eighth film, as previously reported, include Holt McCallany, Nick Offerman, Janet McTeer and Hannah Waddingham.
Christopher McQuarrie has returned to direct from his own script and is producing alongside Cruise, with David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger and Chris Brock serving as exec producers. While M:I8 had at one point been looked at as a franchise ender, McQuarrie has suggested in interviews over the last year that this will not be the end of the road for Hunt and team. Previously set to debut on June 28th of this year, the title will now bow on May 23, 2025 given delays due to the actor’s strike.
O’Brian stars opposite Kristen Stewart in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, a romantic thriller that garnered rave reviews in its world premiere at Sundance before going on to a wide release earlier this month. Showcasing the athletic chops she’ll perhaps be bringing to Mission: Impossible, the film follows her aspiring bodybuilder Jackie as she moves to rural Nevada and falls in love with an employee at her new local gym, there being introduced to the chaotic and damaging world of steroids.
Also known for her roles as Comms Officer Elia Kane on Disney+’s The Mandalorian and Freedom Fighter Jentorra in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the actress’s other TV credits include The Rookie, Magnum P.I., Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Westworld, The Walking Dead and Z Nation, to name a few. Up next, she’ll be seen starring opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell in Universal Pictures’ Twisters, a sequel to the 1996 cult classic Twister, which releases on July 19.
O’Brian is repped by Gersh, Luber Roklin Entertainment, RCM Talent & Management, and Yorn, Levine, Barnes.