Mission: Impossible 5 director Christopher McQuarrie has appeared to poke fun at a report claiming production on the film had to be delayed to fine-tune its “unsatisfactory” ending.

The Hollywood Reporter said Tom Cruise’s fifth outing as agent Ethan Hunt was halted for a few days because the ending needed to be changed, claiming Christopher was given the extra time to “work out a new and improved finale with a writer friend whose identity remains a mystery and who will neither be paid nor credited”.

Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise at a premiere together
Christopher McQuarrie is directing Tom Cruise in the movie (Eric Charbonneau/Invision/PA)

A source was quoted as saying the filmmaker was “scrambling” to come up with the right ending, while a Paramount insider apparently said that Christopher, Tom and another person just wanted to “get from what they thought was a good place to a more perfect place”.

However, the director took to Twitter to respond to the story.

He also tweeted that “filming never wrapped [and] we took a short break to prep the finale properly”, but that message has since been deleted.

Tom, 52, will be joined by Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg in the fifth instalment of the action franchise, which is now due to be unveiled in July after its release date was moved up from December 2015.

The Hollywood heavyweight has been seen out and about shooting in the UK, filming a death-defying stunt on a military aeroplane at 5,000 feet in the air and shooting chase scenes around Piccadilly Circus.