Tom Cruise has proven he’s more than willing to risk life and limb for his craft. The actor has hung outside of airplanes, dangled from helicopters, and run alongside skyscrapers for the Mission: Impossible franchise. And the 57-year-old, who (probably) owns a photo of a wrinkly old man in his attic, recently jumped back into a fighter jet to film Top Gun 2. But clearly this terrestrial plane no longer poses a challenge to him. A new report says he’s planning something that has never been done before. He wants to shoot a featured length film in space, and he’s teaming up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and NASA to make it happen.
Paramount Pictures
According to Deadline, Cruise and SpaceX are working with NASA on an action-adventure movie to be shot in outer space, the first ever to be filmed among the stars. However, it will not be a Mission: Impossible sequel. Also, no studio is attached to the potential project, which still sounds like it is very far away from happening. Few details are currently available, including when—or how—it would work. Or if there’s even a script.
There’s also the obvious question of how much of the “action” portions of the movie could even be shot in space. You can have explosions and disasters take place on spaceships in sci-fi movies. That doesn’t work when real astronauts and real hundred million dollar machines are at risk. Would Cruise simply be filming character dialogue up there? Would this be nothing more than an expensive marketing ploy?
Apollo 13 managed to film those scenes in zero gravity without going to space. It seems a lot more cost effective and safer to do that rather than send Tom Cruise and some camera men to space.
But that’s the point, isn’t it? Earth clearly isn’t dangerous enough for Tom Cruise.
Featured Image: Paramount Pictures