Last updated on August 26, 2021

Movie star Tom Cruise and SpaceX are reportedly working on a project with NASA that involves shooting an action-adventure film in space, according to Deadline Hollywood, who first reported this story

Tom Cruise played a drone repairman who turned into an action hero in the 2013 sci-fi movie “Oblivion.” (Universal Pictures)

NASA is working with Tom Cruise to film the first movie shot in space, according to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. The details of the project aren’t clear, but Bridenstine says the film will take place aboard the International Space Station.

SpaceX did announce in February that it will launch four private citizens to orbit around Earth at the end of 2021 or in early 2022. The passengers are set to fly in SpaceX’s newly developed Crew Dragon spacecraft, which is slated to fly its first NASA astronauts to the International Space Station later this month.

Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. says he’s hearing that the project is in the works but that “no studio is in the mix at this stage.” It wouldn’t be surprising to see a team-up between SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who’s been compared to industrialist Tony Stark from the “Iron Man” movies, and the actor who’s had leading roles in the “Mission: Impossible” movie franchise and the “War of the Worlds” remake.

SpaceX is currently focusing on preparations for its first-ever crewed mission, a demonstration flight to the International Space Station that makes use of the company’s Crew Dragon capsule. Cruise could conceivably take a Crew Dragon flight to the station, under NASA’s recently established commercialization rules, though it’d be more fun to put him aboard the yet-to-be-launched Starship super-spaceship.

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Cruise isn’t the first performer rumored to be interested in spaceflight for professional purposes. Others who are said to have considered in-space performance projects, so far without success, include film director James Cameron (who says he once talked with Cruise about doing a space movie) and a variety of singers including Lance Bass, Sarah Brightman and Lady Gaga.