Tom Cruise can’t get enough of Doug Liman or Chris McQuarrie these days.
After spending the first 30 years of his career jumping from A-list director to A-list director (only working with Cameron Crowe and Steven Spielberg on more than one movie), he’s gotten super comfortable with those two: he went from McQuarrie-directed JACK REACHER over to OBLIVION, then to EDGE OF TOMORROW (directed by Liman, co-written by McQuarrie), followed by M:I - ROGUE NATION (again, McQuarrie), then back to Liman for the upcoming MENA. Now, Liman and Cruise are set to collaborate on their third film together, a project called LUNA PARK.
Cruise will play one of “a group of renegade employees who venture to the moon to steal an energy source.”
Liman was originally set to shoot this back in 2011, possibly with Chris Evans and Andrew Garfield, but co-financier Skydance Pictures pulled the plug due to a skyrocketing budget. Then, the script was co-written by Liman and John Hamburg, but no word on who (if anyone) is doing the dusting off for this new incarnation. It does seem that the greenlight depends on how well the latest draft is received by Paramount and Skydance, so hopefully, whomever’s working on it knows what the execs like to see.
Cruise’s little sci-fi one-two of OBLIVION and EDGE OF TOMORROW was plenty satisfying to this viewer, and apparently lucrative enough to keep him from abstaining from space/the future, so getting together with the latter’s director for this seems like a smart, if safe, move. Cruise has got JACK REACHER 2 and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 6 lined up before this one, so hopefully, LUNA PARK will provide the same refreshing shot of originality that EDGE OF TOMORROW was last summer.
Now, let’s see the results of Liman and Cruise working together on MENA.
