Tom Cruise has been acting since the 1980s, and in that time, he’s established a reputation for being booked and busy; the 57-year-old’s filmography includes everything from World War II-era period dramas to heart-racing, injury-inducing action adventures. Now, Cruise’s newest project will take him to infinity and beyond — we’re going to space, y’all!
The Hollywood Reporter shared details of Cruise’s next film, revealing that the unnamed project will be a blockbuster that literally takes the actor into outer space. The movie, which has not yet been picked up by a studio or with a financier, will be directed by Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow, Mr. and Mrs. Smith). NASA is also reportedly onboard to work on the film, as is space travel enthusiast and father of baby X Æ A-12, Elon Musk.
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Musk’s involvement in the Cruise project is timely given his recent contributions to space exploration. In 2002, he founded SpaceX, a private aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company, with the ultimate goal of enabling the colonization of Mars. SpaceX has successfully launched several vehicles into space to land on the International Space Station, and it is the but today, it attempted its first crewed mission. The Dragon 1 launch was unsuccessful due to bad weather in the area, but Musk has already rescheduled the major event for Saturday May 30.
Should SpaceX’s launch of the Dragon 1 and the NASA astronauts inside of the spacecraft be a successful, finding a home for the intergalactic collaboration between Cruise, NASA, and Musk might be a breeze. The project will be expensive, no doubt — space travel costs a pretty penny — but if it actually happens, it will be a huge deal. Movies like Interstellar, Gravity, and Ad Astra have all "explored" space by way of computer-generated imagery, but the Cruise film will be the first to actually take an actor out to the great unknown.
Cruise has a long way to go before development for this movie actually begins; he still has to finish working on the remaining two Mission Impossible films, and NASA and Musk have their hands full with the SpaceX mission. But when the project is finally ready, it will no doubt be pioneering a whole new genre of filmmaking,