Tom Cruise Filming Part of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two” On U.S. Aircraft Carrier off Italian Coast

It’s old news by now that Tom Cruise is a man who likes to do his own stunts, which includes a lot of the flying he has done in movies like Top Gun: Maverick and his many installments in the Mission: Impossible franchise. For Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Cruise famously piloted a helicopter in the climatic final scene in his chopper-to-chopper battle against Henry Cavill’s August Walker. Stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood told us that Cruised trained on the helicopter for a year to get it right. The scene was ludicrous and it’s wild to think that it was really Cruise doing all those death-defying maneuvers in his chopper, but it really shouldn’t be all that surprising by now.

So the news from Variety that Cruise has been using a chopper to get from the Italian port city of Bari to a U.S. aircraft carrier off the Italian coast (speculation is that it’s the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush) to film scenes for the final installment in his long Mission: Impossible career – Dead Reckoning Part Two is par for the course. Cruise, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie and the cast and crew have been filming the epic two-part conclusion to the franchise back-to-back, and you know they’re going to lay it all on the line, again to deliver a finale worthy of one of the most breathless action franchise in cinematic history.

Variety confirms from the head of the Apulia Film Commission, Antonio Parente, that the U.S. aircraft carrier is “somewhere between Italy and Croatia.”

“We are proud that [the] Apulia [region] has been chosen as the operational base for this rather complex shoot,” Parente told Variety. He added that the Apulia Film Commission liaised with Paramount Italia but only provided help with airport logistics for the Mission: Impossible shoot.

The first half of the two-part conclusion, Dead Reckoning Part One, was shot in Italy, in both Venice and Rome. The locations for the second part have been kept largely under wraps.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is due in theaters on July 14, 2023, while Part Two is slated for a June 28, 2024 release.

For more stories on Mission: Impossible, check these out:

Watch Tom Cruise Perform the Most Insane Stunt in “Mission: Impossible” History

“Mission: Impossible 8” Will Be Tom Cruise’s Last (and Craziest)

“Mission: Impossible – 7” Team Celebrate First Assistant Director Mary Boulding

New “Mission: Impossible 7” Set Photo Reveals Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust