Tom Cruise could be the first actor to shoot a movie in space! According to Universal Studios, the Top Gun: Maverick star, 60, is working on an untitled film with The Bourne Identity director Doug Liman. “I think Tom Cruise is taking us to space, he’s taking the world to space…[and] could be the first civilian to do a space walk outside of the space station,” UFEG Chairman Donna Langley told BBC News. “That’s the strategy. We’re working on a fantastic project with Tom… “We’re going to take a rocket up to the Space Station and shoot,” she added.
Donna also revealed plot details for the film. “[It would involve] the character [going] up to space to save the day,” she explained, noting that the filming would take place on the International Space Station. The majority of the story, however, would take place on Earth.
The move would be historic, but it would also be consistent with Tom’s professional accomplishments, particularly his stunt work as spy Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible series. He even dangled from an airborne biplane in an outtake from director Christopher McQuarrie. Tom was injured in 2017 while performing a rooftop leap, slamming into a cement wall in the middle of the stunt.
Earlier this year, at the Cannes Film Festival, the New York native recalled his first stunt as a child. “I think I was 412 years old, and I had this doll that you throw up in the air, and a parachute comes down.” “I used to play with this thing and throw it off a tree, and I was like, ‘I really want to do this,'” he recalled during a PEOPLE magazine panel discussion with journalist Didier Allouch.
“I remember taking the sheets off my bed, and I would tie a rope … and I climbed up to the eave, and I got up to the roof. I looked and my mother was in the kitchen — she had four kids — and I jumped off the roof,” he went on. “It’s that moment when you jump off the roof and you go, ‘This is not gonna work. This is terrible. I’m gonna die.’ And I hit the ground so hard. Luckily, it was wet. I don’t know how it happened, but I figured out after that my face went past my feet as my ass hit the ground. And I saw stars in the daytime for the first time, and I remember looking up, going, ‘This is very interesting.’”
Ultimately, that moment as a youngster inspired Tom to take on the challenge of doing his own stunts later on. “Now, here I am on a movie set … but I was the kid who would climb to the rafters or climb the tallest tree. I wanted that, I wanted to do that, and how do I develop these skills and make it part of the story and character?” he also said. “Even if I wasn’t working on a movie, I was studying film, I was pushing myself to learn different skills. I was like, ‘I’m going to put this in a movie one day,’” he added.