Mission: Impossible 7's Simon Pegg Reminisces About Touching Down In Norway To Film A Whole Year Ago

Simon Pegg holding gun as Benji Dunn in Mission: Impossible - Fallout

A year ago, seven months after principal photography was originally supposed to start, Mission: Impossible 7 finally began filming, and cameras are still rolling today. As things stand now, it’s still unclear when the next cinematic adventure spotlighting Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt will finishing collecting all its necessary footage, but costar Simon Pegg took some time to reminisce about a year having passed since the Mission: Impossible 7 shoot began.

Over the course of Mission: Impossible 7’s principal photography, Simon Pegg has occasionally checked in on social media to give the masses behind-the-scenes updates. The below Instagram post, however, winds the clock back to show the actor arriving to start shooting his latest outing as Benji Dunn, one of Ethan Hunt’s most valued allies in the Impossible Missions Force:

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With Hayley Atwell having recently finished shooting her Mission: Impossible 7 scenes, it’s possible that this massive production is finally nearing the finish line. Of course, with Mission: Impossible 8 having been greenlit and given a release date, it’s not like Simon Pegg or most of the other Mission: Impossible 7 cast members will have much time to catch their breath. Still, considering that Mission: Impossible 7 has taken much longer to film than your average blockbuster motion picture, I don’t blame Pegg for wanting to look back on how this chapter of the creative process kicked off for him by sharing a snapshot of him leaving the plane that dropped him on in Norway.

Simon Pegg has been part of the Mission: Impossible franchise since 2006’s Mission: Impossible III, with Benji Dunn starting out as a technician and nowadays helping Ethan Hunt and the other protagonists out in the field. With Mission: Impossible 7 marking his fifth appearance in the franchise, Pegg only trails Tom Cruise and Ethan Hunt, both of whom have appeared in all of the franchise’s movies. No specific details have been divulged on what we can expect from Benji in Mission: Impossible 7, aside from him obviously helping bring down whatever threat has emerged.

Quite frankly, we really don’t have any idea of what to expect from Mission: Impossible 7’s story, but cast-wise, it’s been an open book. Along with Simon Pegg, Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames reprising their respective roles, we’ll also reunite with Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Frederick Schmidt and Henry Czerny. As for new faces, Hayley Atwell will be accompanied by Esai Morales (who’s playing the main villain), Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss and Cary Elwes. As with the last two Mission: Impossible movies, Christopher McQuarrie resumed scripting writing and directorial duties on the next two installments.

Mission: Impossible 7 will now come out on September 30, 2022, while Mission: Impossible 8 is still dated for July 7, 2023. If you’re curious about what other movies will hit theaters next year, look through our 2022 release schedule.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.