Tom Cruise’s next ambitious feature film will need Donald Trump’s blessing to shoot scenes in space.
The Mission: Impossible star, 63, is working on an untitled project with Edge Of Tomorrow collaborator Doug Liman in which he intends to film in outer space.
It would be the first-ever Hollywood motion picture to be shot in space, if it is launched off the ground.
However, according to Page Six, he will need permission from the US president, and he would be required to collaborate with both NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX to make it happen.
A source claimed to the publication that Cruise has refused to ask Trump for help launching the project in a bid to maintain his apolitical appearance.
‘From what I understand, they would need NASA coordination to do the movie, and supposedly, Tom Cruise did not want to ask Donald Trump for a favour. You’d need permission from the federal government,’ the insider alleged.
The continued: ‘Tom didn’t want to ask for political reasons.’
A Trump-appointed NASA representative, Jim Bridenstine, previously posted his support for the film shortly after it was announced in 2020.
He wrote on X at the time: ‘NASA is excited to work with @TomCruise on a film aboard the @Space_Station!
‘We need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make @NASA’s ambitious plans a reality.’
The post has since been deleted, and Page Six reported that no further discussions about the film have taken place.
Speaking about the film to Deadline, Liman, 60, said: ‘I’m more excited about going to space, not less… but our goal is to make something great.
‘A lot of people are trying to do gimmicky things like, “Oh, it’s in space.” I’m not interested in doing something that’s just a promotional gimmick.
‘I want to make a film that people watch in a hundred years when maybe there are hundreds of movies shot in outer space, and there’s nothing special about it being in outer space. That’s the goal of everything I do.’
It has taken a long time for the project to launch, with both Liman and Cruise tied up in other projects, including the latest Mission: Impossible film.
Details of the plot are sparse, but Top Gun star Cruise previously said they are working ‘diligently’ to bring the film to life.
Although he didn’t have a start date for the production, Tom told Variety: ‘We’ve been working on it diligently, and we’ll see where we go.’
The news comes after it was reported that President Trump played a major role in having Rush Hour 4 greenlit.
The film was confirmed to be in production last month after it was reported that Trump had been pulling strings to have it made.
Has a film ever been shot in space before?
While this would be the first Hollywood film to be shot in space, it would not be the first film ever to achieve that feat.
Russian film The Challenge, released in 2023, beat Tom Cruise’s project to become the first ever shot in space.
The thriller follows surgeon Evgenia Belyaeva (Yulia Peresild), who has one month to prepare for a flight to the International Space Station (ISS) to operate on a crew member.
It featured scenes shot on the ISS by actor Peresild, who flew into orbit in 2021.
She was joined by the film’s director, Klim Shipenko, in orbit after they trained for months.
They spent 12 days on the ISS to film for The Challenge, with Shipenko opening up to Deadline about his inspiration behind the film.
‘It was my childhood dream,’ he began. ‘Many children in Russia dream about going to space, and that’s because of the big space background Russia and USSR have had.
‘I grew up in the 1980s and cosmonauts were huge stars when, unlike today, people knew them by their names, so it was common among Russian kids to dream about space and becoming cosmonauts.’
Peresild, meanwhile, explained the arduous training she and Shipenko endured to fly into space.
‘It was a fully-fledged Cosmos preparation training procedure in the Cosmos preparation center,’ she said.
‘And I have to say that what we’re doing, we’re doing it at the limit of human ability. Another thing is that we had great specialists and good quality training.’
Representatives for Tom Cruise, Doug Liman, NASA, and SpaceX have been contacted for comment.
