Remember when Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah’s couch? I guess he gets excited like that a lot. Universal Pictures has ponied up a $200 million budget so that Cruise can make his movie in outer space, after an “exuberant” Zoom meeting between the studio, Cruise, director Doug Liman, and producers Christopher McQuarrie and PJ van Sandwijk. It appears the $200 million is a ballpark figure, as the script isn’t completed yet. It can easily cost $200 million to make a movie in PRETEND space, so who knows what this budget could blast off to?
Liman is working on the screenplay and McQuarrie is reportedly serving as a story consultant. Cruise will also act as producer, and Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, is involved as well. SpaceX recently had the first civilian space launch with the Crew Dragon shuttle, propelled by the Falcon 9 rocket, which successfully delivered astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station, and it just so happens that most of Cruise’s movie is expected to film aboard the ISS.
It should come as no surprise that on this risky venture, Cruise is working with people he has an established relationship with. He and McQuarrie are reportedly back at work on ‘Mission: Impossible 8’. They previously worked together on ‘Valkyrie’, both ‘Jack Reacher’ flicks, ‘Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation’, ‘Mission: Impossible: Fallout’, next year’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, and this ‘M:I’ sequel and the next.
Liman directed Cruise in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’/’Live Die Repeat’ and ‘American Made’. In addition to this movie in space, they are planning on returning for a ‘Live Die Repeat’ sequel.
van Sandwijk is a documentary producer, and you can bet that a doc will be made about the filming of this historical project! He produced ‘American Dharma’, and ‘Citizen K’, and is currently producing his first non-documentary film, ‘Thirteen Lives’, which Ron Howard is directing and will be filmed in Thailand. It is based on a true story of a group of young soccer players and their coach who became trapped in an underground cave. Not surprisingly, van Sandwijk is also producing a documentary about the same event.
Stay tuned for updates on this incomparable story as it continues to unfold.
Source: Deadline
