Glen Powell, now a Vanity Fair Hollywood issue cover star, has long counted his Top Gun: Maverick co-star Tom Cruise as one of his mentors. But on Tuesday, Powell denied rumors that he is set to inherit one of Cruise’s major film franchises in the years to come.
Bystanders have speculated that Powell will take over the Mission Impossible mantle after the bow of The Final Reckoning on May 23, 2025. ESPN commentator Pat McAfee called up Powell during his Nov. 12 show to ask the actor directly whether there’s any truth to the chatter.
“My mom would never let me do that,” Powell answered, adding that those action films are “worst gig in town, everybody knows that,” in large part due to the high-intensity stunts they demand—many of which Cruise performs himself. “That’s a death trap,” Powell added.
The 36-year-old star of Hit Man and Twisters seems like a natural successor for the role of special operative Ethan Hunt, especially after playing an up-and-coming pilot alongside Cruise in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. Following the blockbuster debut of that sequel, Powell praised Cruise’s career trajectory. “He took big swings—the guy always pushed the boundaries,” he told Vanity Fair. “People forget, because they now look at him as the greatest stuntman of all time…but when you look at a movie like A Few Good Men, Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, Eyes Wide Shut, Rain Man—these are movies that aren’t typical movie star roles, but because it’s Tom, he made them so iconic and so cool. I feel like his career is just so, in the best way, all over the place.”
For his part, last summer Cruise said that he has no plans to stop playing his super spy character, as he’s done for eight films, beginning in 1996. “Harrison Ford is a legend,” Cruise told The Sydney Morning Herald, citing the elder actor’s decades-long run with Indiana Jones as a source of inspiration. “I hope to still be going. I’ve got 20 years to catch up with him. I hope to keep making Mission: Impossible films until I’m his age.”
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