Taxpayers’ £85m makes Tom Cruise’s missions possible

American movie studio Paramount received almost £85 million of taxpayers’ cash to make the three latest Mission: Impossible movies in the UK, accounts show.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One will be released tomorrow and is the seventh instalment in the super-spy series starring Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell and Simon Pegg.

Parts of the film were shot in locations including Abu Dhabi, Rome, Venice and Norway. However, the bulk of it was made in the less-glamorous surroundings of Leavesden Studios in Watford, Hertfordshire, and Longcross Studios near Chobham, Surrey.

The former was also home to the 2018 prequel, Mission: Impossible Fallout, while the latter is where next year’s Dead Reckoning Part Two is reportedly being shot. Britain’s booming TV and film industry benefits from companies spending on extra services such as equipment hire, travel and visual effects.

Film budgets are usually kept confidential as studios combine the costs of individual movies in their overall expenses and do not itemise how much they spent on each one.

But movies made in the UK are an exception. They benefit from the Government’s Film Tax Relief scheme, which gives a cash reimbursement of up to 25 per cent of the money spent in the UK provided that it represents at least 10 per cent of the total costs. To demonstrate this to the Government, studios set up separate companies to make each film and file publicly available accounts.

Mission: Impossible Fallout and both parts of Dead Reckoning were made by Jupiter Spring Productions –one of Paramount’s UK subsidiaries.

Accounts for Jupiter Spring show that over the five years after the company was set up in 2016, it received £84.5 million of cash from the Government.

The company has also received a combined £10.1 million of insurance payouts and £1.4 million in grants due to disruption caused by the pandemic, which led to production being shut down several times. But the accounts also show that a total of £547.8 million has been spent so far on making the three Mission: Impossible movies.

The costs peaked in 2021 when production of Dead Reckoning Part One was in full swing.

The film, which has received mixed reviews from critics, has already made headlines.

In 2020, Cruise was famously heard in leaked audio shouting at crew members on set in Leavesden for breaking Covid safety protocols by standing too close to each other.

The Mission: Impossible franchise starring Cruise as agent Ethan Hunt has been running since 1996 and has grossed more than $3.5 billion at the box office worldwide.

US actor Ving Rhames has appeared in every single film in the series, and Pegg has had a recurring role since the third instalment.