Shouldn't Jeremy Renner have taken over the Mission: Impossible franchise?

As Ethan Hunt already knows, not everything goes according to plan!

We all have ambitions that don't quite pan out. At the beginning of 2010, Hollywood had grand plans for Jeremy Renner to be its new blockbuster lead. He was the guy who would become an Avenger, take over the Bourne movies, and probably most impressively, appear as the new protagonist of the Mission: Impossible movies. A series that previously crossed paths with Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol featured Renner's William Brandt as a potential new leading man for the blockbusters. Today, when the marketing of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning: Part One is based entirely on Tom Cruise inviting the presence of death by doing elaborate stunts, it may sound absurd for this saga to abandon its original leading man. But the beginning of 2010 was a different time. At this point, it seemed pretty reasonable to have Renner on standby as the next Mission: Impossible protagonist. Of course, these ambitions were among the many grand schemes in Hollywood that never materialized. Like the complications that arise in any of Ethan Hunt's escapades, there are many reasons why the mission to make Jeremy Renner the new face of Mission: Impossible failed.

Why should Jeremy Renner take over from Tom Cruise?

In late summer 2010, the Mission: Impossible franchise was gearing up for a brand new installment that would attempt to get the saga back on track after Mission: Impossible III hit the franchise low. Part of reorienting the saga for a modern audience was the hiring of new cast members for key roles in the production, such as Jeremy Renner. Recently nominated for an Oscar for his work in The Hurt Locker, Renner was a rising star in Hollywood who also just secured a spot as Clint Barton/Hawkeye in The Avengers. Approx. In 2010, movie stars didn't get hotter than Renner, even though he'd never played a lead role in a mainstream movie before.

In November 2010, Renner revealed to MTV what role he was about to take on in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Renner was surprisingly open about his character being viewed as a potential new leader of the entire franchise. Ideally, Ethan Hunt would pass the Mission: Impossible torch to William Brandt. Today, it sounds impossible for anyone other than Tom Cruise to be at the center of this franchise. However, in 2010, such an idea did not sound ridiculous at all. On the contrary, it sounded like savvy business management on the part of Paramount Pictures to keep the lucrative franchise running smoothly.

In 2005, the wheels began to fall off Tom Cruise's star power after a series of high-profile PR snafus, such as jumping on Oprah Winfrey's couch. The theatrical failure of Mission: Impossible III the following year sent shockwaves through the industry as to whether Cruise still had the goods to headline movies. The subsequent dismal box office of Knight and Day in 2010 only seemed to reinforce the idea that Cruise's brightest days as a movie star were behind him. While there was still enough cache in the long-running Mission: Impossible brand to inspire Paramount Pictures for more sequels, the studio was also looking for ways to make sure it didn't live or die based on a single leading man.

Thus, Jeremy Renner entered the game and became the potential new leading man of this lucrative saga. However, around the time Ghost Protocol hit theaters, Renner publicly shifted gears on what he thought the future of the franchise would look like. It seemed that he was now quite certain that Tom Cruise was here to stay as the main character of the Mission: Impossible films. This thought process seemed extremely plausible once Ghost Protocol turned into a massive box office hit. Cruise was no longer turning audiences away from seeing new big-budget films, negating the pressing need for someone like Jeremy Renner to take over the franchise. William Brandt would only be a support player for now.

Jeremy Renner's William Brandt Is Sidelined for 'Mission: Impossible' Movies

Brandt would return for Ghost Protocol's sequel, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, with his returning presence seemingly cementing him as one of the new additions to the franchise. However, this feature turned out to be his last appearance in the saga for now. Mission: Impossible - Fallout didn't feature Brandt returning for more escapades, which apparently boiled down to simple scheduling conflicts. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie revealed that the whole situation was an incredibly awkward script, with Renner being held back in early 2017 in case he was needed for Avengers: Infinity War (he wouldn't appear in that movie), while the Fallout script was so fluid , that McQuarrie and company could not provide a concrete plan for Marvel Studios.

However, McQuarrie came up with the idea for a Brandt cameo in Fallout, in which his character would be killed off in the film's opening scene to create great tension for the rest of the story. The scene would have required just three days of work on Renner's part, but the actor decided to take advantage of the opportunity. This comes after Renner publicly expressed displeasure with his experience working with only script fragments during the production of Rogue Nation. In 2010, Jeremy Renner became the new face of Mission: Impossible. By 2018, he had become increasingly disillusioned with the saga and was even ready to simply kill himself in one incarnation of Fallout.

Of course, it didn't help that Jeremy Renner never panned out the way Hollywood wanted him to. The Bourne Legacy, Renner's take on Matt Damon's successor in the 2012 Bourne films, did just fine at the box office and didn't inspire much enthusiasm among audiences. Meanwhile, Renner's 2013 fantasy action film Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters made solid money at the worldwide box office, but never got a sequel. The lack of post-2012 heat on Renner almost certainly contributed to Paramount Pictures' decision to keep Tom Cruise as the leading man of the Mission: Impossible films. Back in 2014, when Rogue Nation began filming, Jeremy Renner's age as the new face of the Mission: Impossible films was a distant memory.