Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, and Tom Cruise in the same sentence sounds like the opening to a bizarre joke, but the truth is even more ridiculous when you consider it focuses entirely on shooting a major motion picture in outer space.
The Mission: Impossible megastar has spent years touting his venture beyond the stars to shoot Hollywood’s first literal intergalactic blockbuster, with Musk’s SpaceX involved in making his long-held dream a reality.
As much as Cruise loves to break new ground, though, a Russian drama named The Challenger got there first after releasing earlier this year, with Putin making a point of noting that “we are the first to have shot a feature film in orbit, aboard a spacecraft. Once again, the first.”
That no doubt ruffled Cruise’s feathers a little, but whereas The Challenger was an intimate drama limited by its resources, he’s planning to make one of his typical action-packed blockbusters to showcase that he might just be insane by deciding that our planet can no longer contain his ambition.
At the premiere of Dead Reckoning, the A-list titan was asked about the status of the project, where he responded by saying “we’ve been working on it diligently, and we’ll see where we go.” The obvious answer is miles above the clouds, but it goes without saying there are many kinks, issues, and logistics that need to be ironed out before you blast Tom Cruise past the atmosphere so that he can shoot a full-scale feature film from the confines of space.