Tom Cruise has done almost everything on the big screen. The actor known for doing all his own stunts (mostly) seemingly has no limitations on what he’s willing to pull off. At this point, it seems like he picks his projects based entirely on what crazy thing the script will let him do. One crazy thing Cruise very much wants to do is make a movie in space, and one person, who would know, is all for it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is known for being an astrophysicist and for taking shots at movies that don’t use accurate science. Variety caught up with him at the premiere for Project Hail Mary and asked him about Cruise’s planned outer space movie. It turns out Tyson had conversations with the head of NASA after Cruise revealed his intentions. He said…
I did hear about it and, at the time, I spoke with the head of NASA about this, because he approached NASA. He wants all filming to be done in zero g. That’s what we mean by this in space.
Filming in zero gravity has been done before. A handful of films, including most famously, Apollo 13, used a C-131 Samaritan, lovingly nicknamed the “Vomit Comet,” which used a parabolic flight path to create a zero gravity environment. However, because the flight path only allows for a few seconds of zero gravity at a time, the movie ended up with several short clips that needed to be stitched together to make longer scenes.
What Tom Cruise wants to do is film in actual outer space. That may seem like a tall order, but when asked if such a thing would be possible, Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t bat an eye. He seems to think the only thing needed to make that happen is money, and Tom Cruise has that. Tyson continued…
He wants to do the whole thing in space, fine, why not? …. Oh yeah, I mean, he’s got money. He can pay NASA. NASA needs money right now, you think?
Filming in space is certainly possible. In fact, it’s already happened. The Russian movie The Challenge included some sequences that were shot at the International Space Station and aboart space capsules. The filming took place in 2021 and the movie was released in 2023.
Only about 35 minutes of The Challenge’s 165 minute runtime was shot in space. Likewise. The plan for Tom Cruise's movie, at least a few years ago, was that the majority of the movie would be set on Earth, with only part of it taking place in space.
At this point the status of Tom Cruise’s outer space adventure is unclear. Not a lot has been said about it recently. He has other projects he’s currently involved in, including Digger with diretor Alejandro G. Iñárritu and a couple of projects with longtime collaborator Christopher McQuarrie. At this point we don’t know when Cruise might even have time to visit outer space. But it is Tom Cruise, so you can be sure that if making the movie is something he truly wants to do, it will happen.