Though he's been happy hanging off of planes (or flying them) for the last few years in the Mission: Impossible and Top Gun franchises, Tom Cruise is also looking to get back to the sort of auteur-driven, smaller-scale work that saw him win acclaim with the likes of Magnolia. Now, on the heels of him making a deal with Warner Bros., it appears he's tracked down his choice. Cruise is on to star in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's next, untitled film.
Little is known about the new project, as the director is keeping it top secret for now. Deadline has learned that he wrote it in 2023 with Sabina Berman alongside his Birdman collaborators Alexander Dinelaris and Nicolas Giacobone.
Iñárritu took a break between 2015's Oscar-winning The Revenant and 2022's Bardo: False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths, which was released via Netflix.
As for Cruise, he has a number of projects on his To Do list, including a much-mooted movie to be shot in space with Doug Liman in the director's pilot seat. But from the sounds of the new report, he'll next work on the Iñárritu film, which Warner Bros. and Legendary are in negotiations to acquire.
And this new development would seem to put paid to Cruise's involvement in Quentin Tarantino's next — and potentially final — film, The Movie Critic, which is another project he's shown interest in. But then, this is Tom Cruise: he could always try to do both at the same time while driving a ski-doo over a bus.