Tom Cruise Following 'Top Gun: Maverick' With Musical, Action Movies and Maybe a 'Tropic Thunder' Spinoff

Top Gun: Maverick star Tom Cruise and his Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie are hard at work on Ethan Hunt's eighth impossible mission, but they are already plotting their next collaboration. the two are reportedly in the early stages of three very different projects. One is an action movie that's what audiences have come to expect from Cruise, but the others are a musical and a possible Tropic Thunder spinoff.

The first project is described as an "original song and dance-style" musical being planned as a star vehicle for Cruise, sources told Deadline. Cruise learned to sing for the 2012 Rock of Ages film adaptation and audiences have known he could dance since he danced to "Old Time Rock and Roll" in Risky Business. One of the other projects is an "original action film with franchise potential." Deadline offered no other details about that movie.

Cruise and McQuarrie also also "fixated" on Les Grossman, the dancing studio executive Cruise played in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. It's not clear if Cruise and McQuarrie want to make a whole movie about Les Grossman or make a comedy with him in a supporting role. McQuarrie was not involved in Stiller's 2008 Hollywood satire, and he has never worked on a comedy before. McQuarrie, who has an Oscar for writing The Usual Suspects, is writing all three projects in collaboration with Cruise.

Cruise is also developing a fourth project with McQuarrie – the one he plans to film in outer space. Back in May 2020, Deadline reported Cruise was working with Elon Musk's Space X and NASA to make an action-adventure movie with scenes filmed in space. Director Doug Liman, who directed Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow and American Made, is attacked and Universal Studios is backing the movie.

Cruise recently proved he's still the biggest movie star in the world thanks to Top Gun: Maverick. Released 36 years after the first Top Gun movie, the film has grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide, making it easily the highest-grossing movie of the year and the 13th-highest-grossing movie of all time. In Noth America, it has grossed $662.5 million alone. McQuarrie co-wrote the Maverick script and co-produced the film.

Cruise's next movie is Mission: Impossible – Dead Reconking Part One, which Paramount will release on July 14, 2023, and is the seventh movie in the M: I franchise. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reconking Part Two will open on June 28, 2024. McQuarrie is writing and directing both films. McQuarrie also wrote and directed Rogue Nation (2015) and Fallout (2018). Cruise and McQuarrie first worked together on 2008's Valkyrie, which McQuarrie wrote. McQuarrie also wrote and directed Jack Reacher (2012), wrote Edge of Tomorrow and The Mummy (2017), and produced Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016).