Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie are planning a solid trio of follow-ups after they complete on Mission: Impossible 8, including the movie-musical Cruise has long craved, a new action franchise starter, and… something centered on loud-mouth Tropic Thunder fat cat Les Grossman.
For those not in the know: the Oscar-winning McQuarrie has been a long-standing staple in Cruise's later-stage movie career, directing him in Jack Reacher and all of the Mission: Impossible instalments past Rogue Nation. He also produced and contributed to the script for Top Gun: Maverick, which just cleared the box office gross accrued by Titanic over in the States, reaching over $1.3 billion worldwide.
According to Deadline, who broke the triptych of news bites yesterday afternoon, Tom Cruise has “long been interested in doing a musical,” pointing to his appearance in Rock of Ages — for which he practiced how to be, well, a rock star. (Not that it's much of a leap from the star status granted by Hollywood to that of the arena stage.)
Whether or not it'll be a movie-musical follow-up to Top Gun: Maverick co-starring Lady Gaga, who performed the Berlin-esque anthem “Hold My Hand” for the high-flying action romp, is yet to be determined. But hey, if it's good enough for Joaquin.
Exciting, too, for the lifelong Cruise-heads of the world is the broiling return of Les “literally fuck your own face” Grossman to the silver screen. For the uninitiated, Grossman saw Cruise don a fat suit and a scruff of facial hair to portray a grotesque satirisation of hot-headed Hollywood producers. He's sweary, tempestuous, and loves a dad dance. Fans of the film have long awaited his reprisal, with critics pointing to the Weinstein-esque caricature as one of Tropic Thunder's highlights.
Deadline says it's “unclear if they will create a whole movie around Grossman,” given his original appearance came by way of a fleeting cameo, “or borrow him for inclusion in either of the other vehicles."
Which brings us, neatly, to the other-other project on the 60-year-old's slate. This is the one we're least sure about but feels the most up Tom Cruise's wheelhouse: an “original action film with franchise potential,” which sounds a lot like a spiritual successor to the Mission: Impossible series. Our money is on a Logan-esque revenge thriller with Cruise at the helm as a washed-up super-agent disillusioned by a dystopian future, called up to do one last job for the good of mankind. Yeah, something like that.
Oh, and Cruise is still planning to make a film in outer space with the help of NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX, apparently. The retirement age is poised to go up, after all.
