Tom Cruise set to remake forgotten Clint Eastwood thriller — report

Tom Cruise is reported to be teaming up with Mission: Impossible’s Christopher McQuarrie for a remake of an underrated Clint Eastwood thriller.

Cruise used to be a risk taker; the kind of actor who could star in Mission: Impossible and Jerry Maguire one year, before pivoting to the wacko, R-rated wonders of Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia soon after.

His tenure as Ethan Hunt has defined his past 10 years (not to mention breaking the box office with Top Gun: Maverick) — but he’s about to enter the next era of his career. Not only is he starring in Alejandro Iñárritu’s mysterious new project, but he was supposedly in talks for a role in Quentin Tarantino’s final movie (before he axed it). And, notably, he’ll be re-teaming with McQuarrie on a “gnarly” R-rated action movie after Dead Reckoning Part 2 (or whatever it ends up being called).

The latter project may have been revealed: a remake of Eastwood’s The Gauntlet, a 1977 thriller in which he plays a police officer tasked with escorting a prostitute to Las Vegas to testify against the mob. As you’d expect, things don’t go to plan (if it sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen Bruce Willis’ 16 Blocks).

This hasn’t been confirmed, but it’s been shared by two scoopers: MyTimeToShineHello and Giant Freakin Robot. They’ve also claimed that the film would star Scarlett Johansson alongside Cruise, and it’d be produced and distributed by Warner Bros.

Cruise signed a major deal with Warners earlier this year, kicking off a “strategic partnership” that’ll see him developing franchise installments and other original productions, which he’d also star in.

In 2020, McQuarrie teased a “very un-Tom character” on the horizon, later telling Empire: “There’s a movie that Cruise and I are talking about doing next or in some probable next, that Erik [Jendresen] and I developed together – what has been referred to on the internet as ‘The Gnarly Movie’. It’s that movie that they’re all asking for, and that we want to do.”

In the meantime, find out everything we know about Mission: Impossible 8, and check out other new movies to stream this month.