ET was with Cruise and co-star Henry Cavill at CinemaCon, where they talked about pushing the envelope and praying they wouldn't die.
When you consider all of the death-defying stunts Tom Cruise has been tasked with for the Mission: Impossible franchise, it's ironic that the one that finally got him was the seemingly innocuous task of jumping from one building to the next. (Which is why he was "pissed" that he broke his ankle, which ended up halting production for nine weeks.)
That's especially true after watching the newest trailer for Mission: Impossible - Fallout, which teases Cruise, as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, brawling along a cliffside, careering through a ravine in a helicopter and freefalling 25,000 feet from a plane, also known as a High Altitude-Low Opening stunt, or HALO.
"The HALO took us well over a year to figure out how to do it," Cruise told ET's Carly Steel backstage at CinemaCon, revealing the stunt was the last sequence shot for Fallout. "We built a wind tunnel that we practiced on. It was both exhilarating, terrifying and challenging."
Check out a preview of the stunt at the end of this latest trailer:
"We were pushing the envelope, I know it," Cruise admitted. And though that particular stunt may have been the most "extreme" for Cruise, in the latest M:I installment, Ethan Hunt will have his hands full, also facing a "demanding" CIA director played by Angela Bassett and mustached assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill).
"It's definitely adrenaline-fueled," Cavill told ET of his own stunt work. "There were a number of times I was sitting there thinking, 'OK, this is how I die.'"
Director Christopher McQuarrie (Rogue Nation) returns for Fallout, along with Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Michelle Monaghan. "We're constantly pushing ourselves, saying, 'What can we do? What's the next thing?'" Cruise promised. "We definitely pulled out all the stops on this one. So, it's exciting. I can't wait for audiences to see it."
Mission: Impossible - Fallout, Cruise's sixth film in the series, might not open in theaters until July 27, but he is already ready to accept another mission.
"Sure," Cruise said, breaking into a smile. "I'll do another one. Oh, yeah."
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