Tom Cruise loses the race to be the first to film in space as Russia announces they’re sending a movie crew into orbit. Cruise is well-known for performing Earth-bound movie stunts, pulling off numerous death-defying feats in his Mission: Impossible films.
The fearless Cruise indeed upped the ante on his own stuntwork again during shooting for the upcoming Mission: Impossible 7. For his latest feat, Cruise drove a dirtbike off a cliff with help from a ramp and BASE jumped from the plunging vehicle, performing the same stunt six times in order to get it right. But such gravity-dictated stunts aren’t enough for Cruise as he has been planning the next logical step in his progression: filming a movie in space. In September 2020, it was indeed announced that Cruise and director Doug Liman had booked a flight on a SpaceX rocket headed for the ISS in October, 2021. Not to be outdone, Russia soon revealed that they had designs on beating Cruise to space and were recruiting an actress to participate in the ultimate moviemaking adventure.
Unfortunately for Cruise it appears he has indeed lost this new space race between himself and the nation of Russia. As reported by Collider, the Russian film The Challenge from director Klim Shipenko is headed to space ahead of Cruise, with plans to liftoff as early as October 5, 2021. The movie’s production crew has reportedly been preparing for a year at Moscow’s Yuri Gagarin Center for Cosmonaut Training and recently received approval for their flight. The film will shoot for 12 days in orbit.
While Russia prepares to make history by sending a film crew into space, the status of Cruise’s own space project appears up in the air. For starters, there has as yet been no confirmation of reports that Universal was prepared to pay $200 million to make Cruise’s space dream a reality. And there also have been no recent updates about the actor’s supposed SpaceX trip in October. Cruise indeed just recently finished shooting Mission: Impossible 7 after multiple delays, so who knows if he’s even ready for his planned ride into space. Civilian space travel is of course becoming much more of a reality these days after highly-publicized flights by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, as well as the recent first-ever launch of an all-civilian crew into orbit by SpaceX.
Knowing the tenacious Cruise he will one-way-or-another make his space dream a reality before it’s over. But unfortunately it seems he’s lost the race to make history by becoming the first to shoot a film beyond the confines of planet Earth. The good news for everyone though is that it seems a barrier is about to be broken when it comes to shooting footage in orbit, which should only result in more such productions getting the go-ahead to launch. Movie fans can only be happy about the idea of more-and-more realistic space films being made in actual zero-gravity conditions, with or without Cruise.
Source: Collider