Top Gun: Maverick – Skybound Entertainment – Paramount Pictures

In May, a shocking announcement arrived– Tom Cruise was preparing to film an action movie in space!  NASA confirmed this project was real and that most of the filming would take place aboard the International Space Station.  Doug Liman, who directed Cruise in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’/’Live Die Repeat’, is attached to helm, and now comes word that Universal Pictures in pursuing the rights to produce/distribute the project.

Cruise has reportedly been working with Elon Musk’s SpaceX agency, which is pioneering the arena of space tourism.  SpaceX launched the Dragon 2 on May 30, 2020, for the International Space Station.

It is known that there is no script yet.  There doesn’t appear to be a title.  But at the time of the original announcement, it was clarified that this is not part of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise, nor is it a documentary.  This will be an original action movie filmed in space!

It should come as no surprise that the actor planning this is Cruise.  At 58 years-of-age, Cruise still performs a large number of his jaw-dropping stunts himself.  He clung to the side of a plane as it was taking off in ‘MI: Rogue Nation’, and scaled the outside of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai in ‘Ghost Protocol’.  Of course, not everything goes to plan.  Production on ‘Fallout’ was halted for months after he broke his ankle leaping from one rooftop to another.

This will no doubt be a long and arduous process, as this is pretty unprecedented.  Who knows how many permissions will be needed, if it will even be possible to ensure the cast and crew, how much astronaut training each person will have to undergo and so on.

But if they can pull it off, Cruise, Liman, and possibly Universal could have something really special on their hands.

 

Source: Deadline