Tom Cruise Gave His Blessing for Thelma to Use Mission: Impossible Footage (2024)

One of the great things about the new movie Thelma is not only getting to see 94-year-old June Squibb portray a sassy, kick-ass heroine, but the fact that it was given permission from Tom Cruise himself to use footage from Mission: Impossible. Squibb stars as Thelma Post in the film, an elderly woman scammed out of $10,000 who goes on a mission to get her money back, making sure the scammers get their comeuppance. The movie opened on June 21, 2024, and currently holds a 99% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Themla’s writer/director Josh Margolin provided a glimpse into how the production was able to incorporate footage and clips from Mission: Impossible into the film. He says that two versions of the scenes featuring the megastar were shot, just in case they weren’t able to get the footage for use in the final cut. Thankfully, Thelma had a producer that’s friends with Cruise, and approval came from on high during the production.

“It came during production. We shot two versions of those scenes, one with Tom on [TVs and newspapers] and then one with a replaceable green box. It was surprisingly smooth. Nicky Weinstock, who’s a producer on the movie, was at the same agency as him and has some pals in common there. We ended up sending the scene in the script to give him a little context and then a clip of the table read. We got his signoff and then we went to Paramount, which I suspect made things a lot easier there.”

Thelma (2024)

PG-13

Comedy

4.5/5

Thelma is a 2024 comedy film written and directed by Josh Margolin. Thelma Post finds herself duped out of money and more when a scam caller pretends to be her grandson. Unwilling to sit back and let herself be a victim, she sets off into the city to find the perpetrator and take back what is hers.

Release Date

June 21, 2024

While it may have been fairly easy to obtain footage of Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, Margolin would go on to mention in that same interview that it wasn’t so easy to convince Hollywood that Thelma was a movie worth pursuing. Luckily, he found some believers in the movie, mainly due to the star power of June Squibb, who appears in her first leading role in her nearly seven-decades long career on both stage and screen.

June Squibb Says She’s Ready to Star in the Next Mission: Impossible Movie

Mission: Impossible 8 recently wrapped filming and is set to see Tom Cruise return as everyone’s favorite IMF agent Ethan Hunt on May 23, 2025, and while it won’t feature June Squibb, the 94-year-old actress says she could definitely star in the next installment in the long-running franchise if given the chance. After all, Thelma saw her perform the majority of her own, scooter-bashing stunts, so what’s next for the 94-year-old actress to do other than hang off the side of an airplane?

In a recent interview with Movieweb, Squibb made mention of doing her own stunt work, calling it “great fun.” While Margolin wanted to use a stunt double at first, that didn’t happen, with Squibb saying that “I pretty much had the scooter under control all the time.” When teased by our own Greg Archer that he'd like to see her in the next Mission: Impossible film, Squibb laughed and stated “I could do it.”

She’s done everything else over the course of her career, including appearing in the acclaimed films Nebraska (2013), Scent of a Woman (1992), and The Age of Innocence (1993), so why not Mission: Impossible? While it remains a pipe dream for now, you can currently catch June Squibb not only starring in Thelma, but also Inside Out 2, where she provides the voice of Nostalgia.