Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One stars Simon Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson have revealed the secret Morse Code meaning behind the franchise’s theme.

Speaking to NME, the pair shared that they were recently made aware of the secret while appearing the Today FM show Dermot & Dave, hosted by Dermot Whelan and Dave Moore.

“This is an amazing fact,” began Pegg. “Dave from Dermot & Dave, an Irish Radio show told us that when Lalo Schifrin wrote the original music, the theme, [he put in] two dashes, two dots [which translates to] ‘MI’,” the actor explained while sounding out the tune.

“Stop it, it’s true!” interjected Ferguson, who was equally as excited to share the little-known fact.

Lalo Schifrin, an Argentine composer, recorded the M:I theme in 1967. The music was originally commissioned for the Mission: Impossible TV series, which first aired on CBS in 1966.

For the Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Pegg and Ferguson reprise their roles as Benji Dunn and Ilsa Faust, respectively. Alongside franchise lead Tom Cruise, the film also stars Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Vanessa Kirby, Ving Rhames, Esai Morales, and Henry Czerny.

Other cast members include Shea Whigham, Cary Elwes, Indira Varma, Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, Frederick Schmidt, and Greg Tarzan Davis.

In a separate interview with NME, Klementieff and Kirby revealed that they “stopped breathing” as they watched Tom Cruise perform the biggest stunt of the film, in which he drives a motorbike off the edge of the cliff.

NME gave the film a three-star review, writing: “The problems come when Dead Reckoning tries to be too clever. Production on the film wrapped in 2021, so Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie couldn’t have known how prescient the AI themes would prove to be. Now, as ChatGPT dominates the internet and we all wait anxiously for robots to make us redundant, the film’s setup seems like a masterstroke. But it’s sadly also its downfall.”

It continued: “After an exciting first third, we drift into a series of bloated exposition sessions where thinly drawn side-characters spend far too long talking up the apocalyptic (but actually quite vague) threat of AI.

“Even the main baddie, Esai Morales’ mononymous creep Gabriel, doesn’t really understand what’s going on. He seems to believe his fast-evolving gadget can actually predict the future, making bold predictions that turn out true for no reason other than he’s said them. The plot borrows from Westworld and aims for cerebral but ends up coming out like a half-baked Christopher Nolan brain fart.”

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is in cinemas now.