For years, the Tom Cruise in space movie sounded like the logical endpoint of his stunt obsession: shoot a narrative feature partly in orbit, in partnership with NASA and SpaceX, with the “Mission Impossible” actor starring and his “Edge Of Tomorrow” director Doug Liman helming the project. Then, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine even tweeted that the agency was “excited” to work with Cruise on a film aboard the International Space Station, framing it as a way to inspire future engineers.
READ MORE: Doug Liman To Direct Tom Cruise’s Action Movie Filmed In Space
According to a new Page Six report (grain of salt and all that), that movie has now been quietly grounded for an extremely Earthbound reason: Donald Trump. The project reportedly required federal sign-off and NASA coordination, which effectively meant Cruise would have to seek direct assistance from Trump while he was in office. One source says, “Tom Cruise did not want to ask Donald Trump for a favor… Tom didn’t want to get involved for political reasons,” and that reluctance helped stall the film before it could ever properly launch.
There were reportedly other, more mundane obstacles to overcome as well. The space film never had a finished script, raised concerns about insurance for sending a movie star and director into orbit, and generated background chatter about basic feasibility long before cameras could roll. Between the politics, the risk, and the logistics, the once-hyped “SpaceX NASA movie” is now widely described as scrapped rather than delayed.
Cruise has spent decades keeping his politics off the record, and the source says he had no interest in changing that to get a movie off the ground. Earlier this year, The Washington Post reported that he even turned down a 2025 Kennedy Center Honor overseen by Trump, officially blaming “scheduling conflicts.”
Liman has always insisted the point wasn’t just strapping a movie star to a rocket. Speaking to Deadline about the project just this past September, he said, “I’m more excited about going to space, not less… but our goal is to make something great. A lot of people are trying to do gimmicky things like, ‘Oh, it’s in space.’ I’m not interested in doing something that’s just a promotional gimmick. I want to make a film that people watch in a hundred years, when maybe there are hundreds of movies shot in outer space, and there’s nothing special about it being in outer space. That’s the goal of everything I do.”
If the cancellation report is accurate, it’s a rare case where the impossible part of a Tom Cruise stunt wasn’t hanging off a rocket — it was navigating the politics needed to light the fuse.
