Tom Cruise to be first civilian to spacewalk in new film

Fresh off the overwhelming success of Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise will be reuniting with director Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) for a new action movie from Universal Pictures that will see the actor become "the first civilian to do a spacewalk" outside of the International Space Station.

"Tom Cruise is taking us to space. He's taking the world to space. That's the plan," said Donna Langley, the head of Universal Pictures.

"We have a great project in development with Tom, that does contemplate him doing just that. Taking a rocket up to the space station and shooting."

She added that the film will mostly be filmed on Earth, but Cruise's character "needs to go up to space to save the day." She also described his character as "a down-on-his-luck guy who finds himself in the position of being the only person who could save Earth."

Cruise is well known for his ambitious stunt work, most notably in the Mission: Impossible films. He has scaled up to the 130th floor of the 2,722-foot (830m) Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol, and dangled from the side of a plane in Rogue Nation at a speed of 100 knots for six to eight minutes.

Cruise should also be no stranger to the pressures of space, after his gruelling training for Top Gun: Maverick, as well as his experience doing 64 takes in zero gravity for his plane-plummeting scene in The Mummy.

Cruise and Liman are working with both Nasa and Elon Musk's SpaceX company for the film, which has yet to receive a release date.

No Hollywood studio has ever filmed a narrative feature film in space before. The project's budget has been estimated at about US$200 million (S$287 million).

ALSO READ: 'It felt like a funeral': William Shatner felt a sense of grief when he went up into space

This article was first published in Geek Culture.