Tom Cruise & Doug Liman’s Space Movie Could be Delayed as They Seek Space Insurance

For some time now the news of actor Tom Cruise going into space to make a movie with director Doug Liman has captured the mind of the internet. Cruise has been pushing the limits of himself as a man and what can be captured on film in the Mission: Impossible franchise for years now, so a trip into the stars with a camera seems like the next logical step for him. What the film will be about and when it will even be filmed is very much up in the air, and in a new interview Liman says that one of the reasons that they still don’t have firm plans for production is very simple: space insurance.

“From the first conversations that we’ve had about the film… how you insure it has been a central part of the conversations,” Liman told Collider. “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… it’s the same thing in Locked Down, one of the first conversations was about insurance, because of the pandemic… 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.”

It remains to be seen what kind of rates or conversations need to be discussed for a production taking place in space, but we can only imagine the amount of zeroes that need to be added to that check. To that end, Liman wouldn’t commit to a 2021 start date for the space movie despite a previous report that an October 2021 launch would be when they’d fly up.

“I’m not sure any of us really know what 2021 is gonna look like yet, because of the pandemic. I have something I’m working on that I’m hoping I can shoot. But I don’t think anyone can know 100% right now.”

The film will be a collaboration between Elon Musk‘s Space X and NASA, and production would take place aboard the International Space Station. According to a previous report from TMZ, a 2020 to 2023 manifest lists Cruise and director Doug Liman among the passengers on the International Space Station. The duo is expected to hitch a ride on the SpaceX Crew Dragon rocket and capsule to the ISS, which will launch in October of 2021.