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How Tom Cruise Got $200 Million Budget For His Outer Space Movie
An exuberant phone call is apparently all it took for Tom Cruise to secure a $200-million budget for his movie being shot in actual outer space. The veteran star of the Mission: Impossible franchise negotiated a deal with Elon Musk and NASA to shoot the film beyond the confines of planet Earth. Christopher McQuarrie, who has worked with Cruise on several films, including Valkyrie, both Jack Reacher movies, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Mission: Impossible: Fallout, Top Gun: Maverick and both upcoming Mission: Impossible sequels, will produce the groundbreaking movie.
Doug Liman will direct from his script, and will reportedly go up into space with Cruise. This will be their third collaboration, after Edge of Tomorrow and American Made. Eccentric South African-born billionaire Musk is a partner in the venture and made the connection to NASA for the filmmakers. There are no details on a plot for the movie yet, and no word on any co-stars who might be willing to go into space with Cruise. But the budget is reportedly going to be $200-million.
Deadline reports that Cruise managed to secure the money with very little convincing on his part. The actor, McQuarrie, and Liman reportedly got on a Zoom call with Universal executives and managed to convince them purely by force of his personality. The age-defying star was so passionate about the project that the executives agreed to the budget despite there being no script yet.
The report also mentions that Cruise and Liman, who are both pilots, were in Florida earlier this year to witness Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch, the first public-private partnership to send astronauts into space. It is a little surprising that Cruise didn't offer to take a seat on the launch himself, given his love of death-defying stunts.
Since the news was first announced in May, many have speculated just how Cruise will be able to pull this off. Sure, he's known for upping the ante with the stunts he performs on each M:I movie, but this is in a whole other league. However, it's clear now that Universal believes in his vision, and has given him a fairly hefty budget to play with.
One wonders how much of the movie will be shot in space, though, given the prohibitive costs of sending a film crew into space. In light of that, the $200-million seems a little light, given that big-budget blockbusters can easily cost up to $350-million these days. But if they'll actually be in space, perhaps the visual effects budget will be less than is usually needed, and Universal can balance the budget that way. Trust Tom Cruise to pull off something no one else would even consider.
