BERLIN, Aug 12 (AFP) - Shooting on "Mission Impossible 3" will be pushed back until next year because its star and producer Tom Cruise was forced to find a new director, the German studio where it is to be filmed said Thursday.
A spokesman for Studio Babelsberg outside Berlin said production would not start as planned at the end of August but rather in the summer of 2005.
"Cruise will use the postponement in filming to shoot the film 'War of the Worlds' with Steven Spielberg," said the spokesman, Felix Neunzerling.
Neunzerling said that filmmaker Joe Carnahan had walked off the set of the high-octane sequel over "creative differences" but that Jeffrey Abrams, creator of the hit television series Alias, had agreed to sign on.
The last-minute crew change, however, disrupted the filming schedule.
Cruise, 42, had reportedly already signed an option to rent a sumptuous lakeside palace compound in Berlin to accommodate himself and his entourage during the filming at a cost of more than 30,000 euros (37,000 dollars).
"M I 3" has suffered several setbacks since pre-production began, with its first director David Fincher pulling out to make "Lords of Dogtown," while a series of writers have already come and gone from the project.
The "Mission Impossible" franchise of films, in which Cruise plays agent Ethan Hunt, has been lucrative for Paramount Pictures.
The first movie in the series, directed by Brian de Palma in 1996, grossed 454 million dollars worldwide, while the 2000 sequel, directed by John Woo, took 546 million dollars following its 2000 release.
The latest installment, which reportedly has a production budget of around 150 million dollars, is to co-star Kenneth Branagh, Scarlett Johansson, Carrie-Anne Moss and Ving Rhames.