Tom Cruise Partnering With NASA For Space-Set Project

May 6, 2020

After teaming up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for a space-set adventure film, Tom Cruise has formed a partnership with NASA to shoot a film aboard the International Space Station, with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine taking to Twitter to reveal the news.

NASA is excited to work with @TomCruise on a film aboard the @Space_Station! We need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make @NASA’s ambitious plans a reality. pic.twitter.com/CaPwfXtfUv

— Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) May 5, 2020

It’s unclear at this point if the film aboard the International Space Station is connected to the project Cruise is working on with SpaceX, but given Musk replied to Bridenstine’s tweet by saying “Should be a lot of fun!,” all signs point to the two science organizations working together on the movie. The film announced on Monday with SpaceX is set to be the first narrative feature shot in outer space and is reportedly not attached to Cruise’s long-running hit franchise Mission: Impossible.

Cruise has become notorious in Hollywood for his meticulous nature of doing almost exclusively his own stunts, rivaling Jackie Chan (The Foreigner) for the heights and extremes he will go to deliver pulse-pounding set pieces throughout his various blockbuster films. While the first Mission: Impossible was a generally tame effort for stunts, Cruise has taken it bigger with each follow-up, beginning with the no-wire climb in Mission: Impossible 2 in Utah’s Dead Horse Point State Park and continuing with the Shanghai skyscraper run in 3, scaling the Dubai skyscraper the Burj Khalifa and executing stunts 123 floors up in Ghost Protocol.

The most notorious came in the sixth and most acclaimed installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Fallout, which saw him hang from a helicopter in flight and scale a hanging payload, followed by flying the chopper itself around the Siachen Glacier and conducting a real High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) jump. He also leaped between multiple rooftops for a foot chase sequence, which resulted in him infamously breaking his ankle and forcing production to halt on the film for two months.