Action star Tom Cruise has a new project on the horizon with Universal Pictures, and the team wants to put the “Top Gun” star out into actual outer space. Chairman of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group Donna Langley recently confirmed the studio is “serious” about their intent to send Cruise beyond the atmosphere, making him “the first civilian to do a spacewalk outside of the space station.”
This space launch would be part of a yet-unannounced movie pitched to Langely via Zoom during the pandemic by Cruise and Doug Liman. According to her, the untitled project “actually takes place on Earth, and then the character needs to go up to space to save the day.” While that’s admittedly not much of of a plot summary, the novelty comes from Cruise headed to the International Space Station (ISS), the largest modular space station in low Earth orbit, in order to shoot a scene in the horrifying vacuum of space.
This stunt would be one more piece of evidence that Cruise might just think he’s actually invincible. The 60-year-old actor has hung off the side of planes, jumped motorcycles off cliff sides, and gone free climbing up the sides of mountains. With this latest stunt proposal, it’s pretty clear that Cruise either believes he can’t be killed or that he wants to die in the most interesting way possible.
To add drama into the proceedings, Cruise’s space movie expedition has been in the works for quite a while now. A production date is still very much up in the air. They still need to build, you know, an actual film around Cruise’s death wish. And it’ll need to be good enough to justify the initial budget of $200 million. In addition, a Russian tv channel announced in December 2020 that they too would be filming a movie in space, prompting a second Space Race of sorts.
Just like Maverick to pick a fight with the Russians. We’ll just have to wait to see if it’s worth it.
