After an extraordinarily lengthy production period, the end is finally near for the seventh Mission: Impossible movie. Dubbed Dead Reckoning Part One, the film is a direct sequel to Mission: Impossible - Fallout and will lead directly into the eighth potentially final film, Dead Reckoning Part Two.

It feels like we've been waiting for the new Mission: Impossible for an unusually long time, and it's because we have. Production was set to start in February of 2020, but of course, the COVID-19 pandemic immediately caused major delays. In the end, it was about a year and a half from that planned start before they finally completed principal photography.

But it was completed, and before too long we'll be able to see what kind of insane stunts that star Tom Cruise pulled off this time around. But we did, at least, get some bits and pieces from the cryptic first teaser trailer that released earlier this year, which you can check out here.

Like some other long-running franchises with lead actors who are growing pretty long in the tooth for this kind of intense production (Cruise turned 60 this year), they could be drawing the whole thing down here with a two-part film that could bring the whole thing to a close. But they haven't said that outright just yet--After Top Gun: Maverick blew the doors off the 2022 box office, it'll likely depend on how Cruise feels after they finish these two up.

But, in the meantime, here's everything we've got on Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning Part One.

When is Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One hitting theaters?

The seventh Mission: Impossible movie is currently scheduled for July 14, 2023.

Who's directing?

Christopher McQuarrie--who previously wrote and directed the last two Mission: Impossible films and the first Jack Reacher movie, and who wrote Top Gun: Maverick--wrote and directed this film.

Which characters from the other Mission: Impossible movies can we expect back for Dead Reckoning Part One?

Aside from Tom Cruise, who will once again be playing main franchise protagonist Ethan Hunt, his core team of Luther and Benji (Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg) will also be in tow. Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa, who's been positioned as sort of the British version of Ethan over the last couple movies, will also show up. And Vanessa Kirby, who stole the show in Fallout as the alluring arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis, will return as well.

But maybe even more notable is the return of Henry Czerny (pictured), who played IMF director Eugene Kittridge in the first movie all the way back in 1996. We know he hasn't been running IMF in the decades since, otherwise we'd probably have run into him again. So where's he been and what's he been up to?

Those are all the returning folks we know about right now. But just as Kirby's character was new in the last film but was actually the daughter of Max from the first Mission: Impossible movie, we should at least expect further connections to the past.

As for new cast members who may or may not have said connections to Ethan Hunt's past in some way, we've got Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Carey Elwes, Indira Varma, Shea Whigham and even comedian Rob Delaney, among others.

While we shouldn't presume to know who's actually good and who's actually bad until we watch the movie, Esai Morales is supposedly playing the main villain.

So what's Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning Part One about?

We have no plot details at all just yet. That last two movies saw Ethan wrestle with a group first called The Syndicate and then The Apostles, defeating them both times and capturing Solomon Lane, the group's leader, both times as well. But the rest are presumably still out there, and Vanessa Kirby's Alanna Mitsopolis remains a nebulous wild card.

If this movie is the beginning of the end for Ethan Hunt, then it's very likely that he'll be dealing with folks who've been involved in his past shenanigans. And they wouldn't dredge up a character like Kittridge if there wasn't some big picture purpose to it, like, for example, to establish a new threat from Ethan's past.

What kind of incredible, death-defying stunts can we expect from Tom Cruise this time around?

There are three big sequences that we know for sure are going to happen. First: a big train crash, with Cruise and Morales filming some kind of action on top of it. Presumably this is at least a nod to the first movie, which also featured a climactic people-on-top-of-a-train action sequence. The snippets we saw of this sequence

The second confirmed stunt involves Cruise ramping off a cliff in Norway on a motorcycle before jumping off and opening a parachute. We actually have behind-the-scenes video of this one that you can watch right here. And you can see how it will look in the movie in the teaser.

And the third big sequence is a car chase in Rome, which we saw snippets of in the teaser trailer.

Over/under on how many key characters will dramatically reveal that they were secretly disguised as a different key char

I'll set it at 2.5. And I'd bet the over.