Houston, He Has Has A Problem. Tom Cruise Wants To Film In Space.
After climbing the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa, strapping himself to the side of a plane, and even flying an actual fighter jet all in the name of entertainment, leave it to Tom Cruise to attempt to shoot a movie in space.
The movie is to be a joint collaboration between NASA and Space X, using the actual International Space Station as a shooting locale. It was announced back in May of 2020 that Cruise and director Doug Liman were working on a new film which would be, at least partially, shot in space. But leave it to that pesky production insurance to gum up the works.
Director Liman spoke with Collider a year ago about the issues of insurance and at the time all seemed to be going to plan, sort of,
"So, we wouldn't be talking about this movie if we hadn't figured out a way to navigate the insurance component. So we have navigated it, but there would not have been a conversation about this movie without figuring out the insurance... You can't make a movie without having an insurance conversation. And [whether] you're talking about going to outer space, [or] you're talking about shooting in London in the heart of the pandemic, you know, insurance is gonna dictate whether that actually is possible."
There were also reports of an actual space station being built strictly for filming future space movies, though it will not be used for Cruise's project.
The plot for the film as reported by Variety, is an action movie about "a down-on-his-luck guy who finds himself in the position of being the only person who could save Earth." Sounds like a Tom Cruise vehicle if there ever was one.
Enstarz reported back in October that a Russian film crew is unfortunately beating the Mission: Impossible star to making the first movie in space. Their film entitled The Challenge left for the International Space Station on October 5th to begin filming.
Guess even Tom Cruise can't win them all.