The production of the new Mission: Impossible movies has been a story worthy of the IMF itself. Ready to get to work filming in Italy in early 2020, the production became one of the first blockbusters to shut down due to growing pandemic. When the movie finally got underway again, it moved slowly so as to avoid any issues with the pandemic, but it ultimately failed in that regard as the production was shutdown twice due to positive tests. And now those shutdowns are the subject of a lawsuit.
According to a lawsuit filed by Paramount, the production on the new Mission: Impossible films actually shutdown a total of seven different times due to a variety of reasons related to Coronavirus. There was the initial shutdown in Italy when Venice went into lockdown in the early days of the pandemic. There were the two times that people on the set tested positive, and production needed to shutdown, the first of those happened in February in Rome and the second took place in June in the U.K.
However, there were a few other times that production was forced to halt due to things like travel restrictions. When production moved to the U.K. from Dubai production needed to shutdown for two weeks. Filming in the UK also needed to halt at one point due to a cronavirus surge in the area where filming was being done.
Paramount Pictures filed an insurance claim with the Federal Insurance Company, which paid the studio $5 million. However, Paramount claims that its loses have been several times that amount, and has now filed a lawsuit to attempt to get the recompense it believes it deserves.
The BBC does not report how much the lawsuit is for and Paramount is not revealing just how much it claims to have lost due to the shutdowns, but if we assume that each of the seven shutdowns stopped production for two weeks, then the filming was put behind schedule by more than three full months, which is quite significant considering that a lot of movies' full production schedules wouldn't even last that long.
At the same time, while production delays, and the insurance payouts that go with them, are not uncommon in Hollywood, this particular reason for delays is new and is likely uncharted territory for all involved. The outcome of this lawsuit could go a long way in determining how both studios and insurance companies move forward. Several productions have seen covid related delays in the last year, either due to positive tests within the production or simply the requirements where filming was taking place, and under the circumstances that seems to continue to be the case for some time.
