M:I6 shoot halted as Cruise breaks ankle in stunt

LOS ANGELES – Mission: Impossible 6 has halted filming after Tom Cruise broke his ankle in a botched stunt, the director confirmed Wednesday, while vowing not to push the release date back.

Cruise, known for performing his own death-defying stunts, was injured as he leapt between buildings while attached to cables, slamming into a concrete wall.

M:I6 director Christopher McQuarrie took to social media to assuage fears that the movie’s planned July 27, 2018 release date would have to be pushed back.

“Thank you all for your support and concern. Tom is on the mend and MI6 is on track for 07.27.2018,” he tweeted after visiting the 55-year-old A-lister.

McQuarrie – who directed Cruise in Mission: Impossible 5 (2015) and Jack Reacher (2012) – posted a link to an article with British film magazine Empire in which he said his star was “in very good spirits.”

He rejected reports that Cruise had fallen short on the jump, filmed in central London on Saturday, maintaining that the star was always supposed to slam into the side of the target building.

“What happened is a matter of coordinating what Tom is doing with what the camera is doing, which means you have to do it a number of times,” the director said.

“And on the fourth try, he hit the building at a slightly different angle and he broke his ankle. He knew the instant that he hit the building that his ankle was broken. You can see it on his face.”

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Mission: Impossible 6 – co-starring Simon Pegg, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Angela Bassett and Alec Baldwin – has two more months of filming scheduled.

McQuarrie told Empire the length of the required hiatus had yet to be determined, but vowed he would “move heaven and earth” to ensure that the fateful fourth take got into the movie.

The director added that he was rearranging the order of the shoot and using any delay as an opportunity to “look at what we’ve shot and reassess the movie, which is a luxury you don’t normally have.”

Cruise is admired in the industry for his adventurous attitude to filmmaking, which over the years has involved some hair-raising moments on set.

Cruise’s co-stars in summer blockbuster The Mummy revealed earlier this year the actor is not just single-minded when it comes to do doing his own stunts, but cajoles his fellow cast members to get involved too.

“We jump off buildings and towns explode, and Tom really does it all, and he insists his cast do it too,” added Jake Johnson, 39, who plays Cruise’s sidekick in action thriller.

“Yes, I got hurt. My character dies, I almost died. We’d do a stunt and it would hurt, and I’m like, ‘I think something went wrong because it hurt’ and he’d go ‘Well yeah – we jumped off a building, dummy.’”

Paramount, the studio distributing M:I6, and Cruise’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment. – AFP