Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie Developing Three New Projects: A Musical, A New Action Franchise, and Revisiting Les Grossman

These days, Tom Cruise is sort of a package deal with filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie. The pair has made the Mission: Impossible movies, as well as Jack Reacher, Edge of Tomorrow, and most recently, Top Gun: Maverick. The actor and the writer/director are constantly collaborating to find the next great film to push Cruise’s limits in, and we have some insight into their next few projects.

They are still in the thick of Mission: Impossible 8 — Cruise was recently photographed in the UK’s Lake District practicing what appears to be his next death defying stunt, something called “speed flying” — and sources have told Deadline that Cruise and McQuarrie are hatching three new film projects. One is an original song and dance-style musical they’ll craft as a star vehicle for Cruise. They are also setting up another original action film with franchise potential, and they are also fixated on Les Grossman. The latter is the gruff, dance-happy studio executive Cruise played in cameo for Tropic Thunder. It’s unclear if they will create a whole movie around Grossman, or borrow him for inclusion in either of the other vehicles.

Cruise has long been interested in doing a musical. He learned to sing like a rock star for Rock of Ages, and would dance as well, with all three of these scripts to be written by McQuarrie in collaboration with Cruise.

Also looming large is the untitled film that Cruise intends to make with director Doug Liman and McQuarrie producing. You know, the one they’ll shoot in outer space, with NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Universal has bought the rights to this projects, and they have aligned with SEE-1, film producer duo Elena and Dmitry Lesnevsky’s newly-launched Space Entertainment Enterprise (S.E.E.) that will dock with Axiom’s world-first commercial space station Axiom Station, which is connected to the International Space Station (ISS). This will most likely be the next project on Cruise and McQuarrie’s docket.

Which of all these wild project ideas are you most excited about seeing get made?