Christopher McQuarrie

Christopher McQuarrie (birthname: Christopher Allen McQuarrie) is the go-to filmmaking partner with Tom Cruise, having directed and written eleven movies with Cruise attached. McQuarrie’s feature debut was a co-writing credit (with debuting director Bryan Singer and co-writer Michael Feit Dougan) on the drama, Public Access (1993), which won the Grand Jury Prize in Sundance Film Festival’s Dramatic Features competition.

McQuarrie’s second produced screenplay marked a career breakthrough—The Usual Suspects (1995), his second project with director-producer Bryan Singer, starring Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, Benicio Del Toro, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Pollak, Pete Postlethwaite, Suzy Amis, and Giancarlo Esposito, and winning two Oscars (screenplay for McQuarrie, best-supporting actor for Spacey) and grossing $67 million (over ten times costs), after its Sundance premiere.

After working as a script doctor and doing several uncredited rewrites (including 1997’s Batman & Robin and 2000’s X-Men), McQuarrie made his debut as director-writer with the thriller, The Way of the Gun (2000), co-starring Ryan Phillippe and Del Toro, with Juliette Lewis, Taye Diggs, and James Caan. It was eight years until Christopher McQuarrie had his next movie, as writer-producer of his first project starring Tom Cruise, Valkyrie (2008), and his third with director Singer, resulting in a robust return of $201 million globally. When Cruise was set to play the lead in The Tourist (2010), McQuarrie was aboard as screenwriter and received a screen credit even though Cruise eventually left the project (and was replaced by Johnny Depp, opposite Angelina Jolie).

Christopher McQuarrie began, in 2012, a role as a very active director and writer, almost on projects with Tom Cruise, except Warner Bros.’ commercial bomb, Jack the Giant Slayer (2013), which McQuarrie wrote and Singer directed and co-produced. McQuarrie’s run with Cruise began in earnest with their first Lee Child adaptation, Jack Reacher (2012), with Rosamund Pike, Richard Jenkins, Werner Herzog, David Oyelowo, and Robert Duvall, and grossing $218 million globally.

This success spawned a second Lee Child adaptation, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016), for which McQuarrie was the sole producer, and co-starred Cobie Smulders and Aldis Hodge, and earned a solid $162 million worldwide for Paramount. McQuarrie co-wrote (with credited writers Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth) the wildly imaginative sci-fi thriller, Edge of Tomorrow (2014), directed by Doug Liman, and co-starring Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, and Brendan Gleeson, and grossing $370.5 million globally. McQuarrie’s other co-credit as screenwriter of a Cruise-starring project during this period was the lambasted but commercially successful ($410 million gross) remake of The Mummy (2017), with credited co-writers David Koepp and Dylan Kussman.

Christopher McQuarrie began a remarkable string of director-writer credits on the Tom Cruise-starring Mission: Impossible franchise, starting as director-writer of Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation (2015), with Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, and Alec Baldwin, and earning a spectacular $682.7 million global gross. This was followed by the universally acclaimed Mission: Impossible—Fallout (2018), on which McQuarrie was director/writer/producer, with new cast members Henry Cavill, Angela Bassett, and Michelle Monaghan, earning a knockout return of $791 million worldwide.

Christopher McQuarrie’s next M: I was built as two parts, Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) and Dead Reckoning Part Two (2024), with credited co-writer Erik Jendresen, and new cast members Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, and Henry Czerny, and with McQuarrie and Cruise as sole producers.

McQuarrie wrote the screenplay (with credited co-writers Eric Warren Singer and Ehren Kruger) and co-produced (with Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer, and David Ellison) of the mega-hit sequel, Top Gun: Maverick (2022), with Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer, and grossing a phenomenal total of $1.5 billion (tops in Cruise’s filmography) after garnering six Oscar nominations (including a pair for McQuarrie for screenplay and Best Picture).