The film is set to arrive in May next year

Tom Cruise has shared a first look at the newly-retitled Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.

The film is set to be the next installment in the long-running Mission: Impossible franchise. The movie series, which is based on a 1966 TV spy show, began in 1996.

This latest film was originally billed as “Part Two” to 2023’s Mission: Impossible –Dead Reckoning.

Unveiling the film’s new title, along with a teaser trailer on social media, Cruise wrote: “Every choice has led to this.”

Despite the finality implied by the title, Cruise has previously said he hopes to continue making Mission: Impossible films for decades.

Last year the action star compared the franchise to Indiana Jones and told The Sydney Morning Herald: “Harrison Ford is a legend. I hope to still be going. I’ve got 20 years to catch up with him.”

He continued: “I hope to keep making Mission: Impossible films until I’m his age.”

Cruise was 34 when he first played super spy Ethan Hunt in 1996’s Mission: Impossible. The character was two years younger than the actor. He is now 62.

In comparison, Ford was 38 when he played Indiana Jones for the first time in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. He was 80 in the fifth and most recent addition to the franchise, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which was released last year.

In Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Cruise’s character Ethan Hunt finds himself as the only man on Earth capable of defeating a seemingly sentient, AI-powered virus that possesses the ability to infiltrate any top-secret infrastructure it sets its sights on, like, say, the CIA or the World Bank.

In a four-star review of the film, The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey wrote: “Mission: Impossible is exactly the sort of franchise in which people simply roll their eyes when the bomb they’re trying to detonate turns out (of course!) to be a nuclear one. That lack of ponderousness is embedded bone-deep into Dead Reckoning, and how returning director Christopher McQuarrie chooses to operate.

“The action sequences are consistently dynamic, and always adapted to their environment: a shoot-out in a sandstorm focuses on stealth and precision, while a Vespa chase down Rome’s many staircases is all cartoon chaos. It all culminates in an absolutely insane stunt in which Cruise drives a motorcycle off a cliff and then parachutes down onto a moving train. You will leave Dead Reckoning the same way you always do: wondering how Cruise could possibly outdo himself in the next one – until, inevitably, he does.”

Mission: Impossible –The Final Reckoning is set to be released on May 23, 2025.