Tom Cruise prepares for space stunts for his orbiting movie project

At 61, Tom Cruise seems far from wanting to retire. During the preview of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1, the actor confirmed to the American magazine Variety his desire to shoot a film in orbit. Better still, the project announced in 2020 would allow him to become the first “tourist” to go out into space.

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Directed by Doug Liman, director with whom he had worked for Edge of Tommorow, the American must play an unlucky man who turns out to be the only one who can save the Earth. The 200 million euro production would be carried out in partnership with NASA and Space X, the space company of multi-billionaire Elon Musk. The trip to the international space station and the filming on board should be supervised by astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, the record holder for the United States for the number of spacewalks.

Spectators will have to be patient, however, as no date has yet been set for the release and even for filming, while the flight schedule to the ISS is set months in advance. "We are working on it diligently, I'm waiting to see where the project will take us," the actor simply eluded Variety.

As in the good old race for stars, the American project, announced in 2020, was overtaken by the Russian ambition of Klim Chipenko. The Soviet director released The Challenge in April 2023. A drama shot in 12 days on the International Space Station. It tells the story of a doctor (played by Yuliya Peresild) whose mission is to save an injured astronaut who cannot be repatriated to Earth. The title of the film sounds like a snub to American competition. A cold and continuous rivalry that feeds our curiosity to see the next stunts of Tom Cruise in weightlessness.