Doug Liman to Direct Tom Cruise in Movie Filmed in Space

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the announcement of some pretty creative projects for the film […]

May 26, 2020, 5:47pm

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the announcement of some pretty creative projects for the film industry, but none have been quite as headline-grabbing as the news that Tom Cruise plans to film a movie entirely in outer space. Now, we know which director will be joining him on that incredibly unique journey. A new report suggests that Doug Liman plans to direct Cruise in the currently-untitled action-adventure film, after he and the actor came up with the idea together. Liman reportedly also wrote the first draft of the film’s screenplay, and both he and Cruise are expected to solve as producers.

Liman previously worked with Cruise on Edge of Tomorrow and American Made, and has a filmography that also includes Jumper, The Bourne Identity, and Swingers. He also is in post-production on Chaos Walking, an upcoming sci-fi film starring Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland. Cruise, meanwhile, is currently waiting to resume production on Mission: Impossible 7, and has the long-awaited release of Top Gun: Maverick poised for December 23rd.

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The film will reportedly be a collaboration with Elon Musk’s Space X and NASA, with filming expected to take place aboard the International Space Station. Days after rumors first began to swirl, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine confirmed the news, arguing that projects like the film will “inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make NASA’s ambitious plans a reality”.

As it stands now, the project does not have a studio attached, much less a confirmed title or plot. All we know is that the project is expected to be an action-adventure film.

While the project is apparently in its early stages, it does feel pretty on-brand for Cruise, especially given his history with other stunts. Just within the Mission: Impossible franchise, he climbed the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Ghost Protocol, hung from the side of a plane in Rogue Nation, and hung out of a helicopter in Fallout. That latter film briefly had to shut down production, when Cruise broke his ankle leaping across rooftops.

“I just [wanted to] keep going because I know I’m not doing this again,” Cruise said of the stunt in a 2018 interview. “I had to go into full rehab. I had friends calling, ‘Oh man, you want to come down to the south of France.’ [I had to reply] ‘I have got 10 to 12 hours of rehab.’”

“I spent years training for these things and I have been doing it for years. So we do everything we can possible to limit any kind of mistakes and we are very thorough about how we approach these things and calculate it,” Cruise explained. “When you are going, there are times I’m not wearing a helmet and we are going high speed.”