Tom Cruise’s space movie reportedly died because he refused to beg Trump for permission to film it in space

Scientology cult member Tom Cruise sure sounds like a terrible husband and father, but he’s also the only real action star we have left. It’s not just because he insists on performing his own stunts either (although that is part of it). As far as Cruise is concerned, there’s no reason to fake a green screen stunt when he could actually jump off a real cliff with a real motorcycle. But even Tom Cruise wasn’t willing to do what it took to shoot a space movie in space. Page six reports. Why? Because he refused to beg Trump for a favor.

All the way back in 2020, Cruise and director Doug Liman announced they were working on a film that would be shot in space with the help of SpaceX and NASA. However, five years after the announcement, that film has still not been released. And according to “an insider familiar with the filmmakers,” that’s because “they would need NASA coordination to make the movie, and presumably Tom Cruise didn’t want to ask Donald Trump for a favor. You would need permission from the federal government.”

According to the anonymous source (Cruise’s assistant? Tom Cruise himself?) “Tom didn’t want to ask for political reasons.” As Page Six put it, “Cruise has remained largely apolitical over the years, and the source said he didn’t want to alienate fans by starting now.”

That said, securing NASA’s support may not have been as unlikely as it seems likely. When the project was first announced in 2020, Trump-appointed NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted: “NASA is excited to work with @TomCruise on a film aboard the @Space_Station! We need popular media to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists to make @NASA’s ambitious plans a reality.” It would have been objectively great to get to shoot a movie on the International Space Station, but Bridenstine, who now sits on the board of a company called Voyager Space Holdings, has since deleted the tweet and “space insiders tell Page Six that there were never any further discussions within the space agency about the film.”

Unfortunately, the Tom Cruise space movie shot on the ISS is cancelled. That’s probably for the best, especially considering how much money it would have cost to shoot in space, but I’m also not going to pretend that I’m not a little sad that we’ll never see it. If anyone can make a movie set in space profitable, it’s probably Tom Cruise. But we’re still getting a “Days of Thunder” sequel, so at least there’s that.