We previously reported that Tom Cruise was working with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for a space-set adventure film, and now it seems that yet-to-be-titled project has found a director in Doug Liman. This would mark the third collaboration between Cruise and Liman, who teamed on the brilliant Edge of Tomorrow and the underrated American Made.
According to Deadline, the duo have been working on the space flick for a while and are eager to get things moving as soon as possible. Liman wrote the first draft of the screenplay and plans to produce as well.
Both Cruise and Liman are busy wrapping other projects at the moment. Cruise is waiting to get back to work with Christopher McQuarrie on Mission: Impossible 7, which was shut down due to the coronavirus; and has the recently completed Top Gun: Maverick waiting in the wings. Liman is in postproduction on Chaos Walking, starring Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland. Cruise and Liman were also working on a separate project together titled Luna Park for Paramount Pictures.
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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.
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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.
