See Tom Cruise In A Wild Stunt For His Birthday
Stop making the rest of us look bad, Tom!
What do you prefer to do for your birthday? Are you one of those people who designates an entire birthday week? Do you treat it just like any other day? Do you celebrate in style or do you prefer to just have a nice, quiet day off? Well, if you’re Tom Cruise then it’s very possible you spend it hanging off a flying biplane.
This Sunday, July 3, marked the sixtieth birthday of Tom Cruise. Christopher McQuarrie — who directed 2012’s Jack Reacher along with all of the Mission: Impossible films since 2015’s Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation — tweeted out a happy birthday message to Cruise with a wonderfully fitting photo. McQuarrie writes simply “Happy 60th birthday, Tom,” but since the attached picture shows Cruise hanging off of a flying biplane, we’re guessing it’s the “60th” that we should put the emphasis on in that sentence. You can see the tweet below.
Of course, in all likelihood this shot was not taken on Cruise’s birthday. In fact, there’s a decent shot it wasn’t even taken this year. With the exception of the color of the biplane, it looks an awful lot like photos from the set of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part Two that surfaced in November of Tom Cruise performing a similar mid-air stunt while hanging off a biplane. Either the color of the plane was changed in post-production, the pictures from November were from a practice run, or Cruise spends a surprising amount of time in the final Mission: Impossible entry hanging off biplanes. You can see the images from November below.
Tom Cruise is known for his insistence on doing his own stunts and it seems like with the final entries in his part of the Mission: Impossible franchise, he just keeps pushing the envelope. That may have a lot to do with why he’s reportedly refused to cave to the demands of Paramount Studios — when he’s literally putting his life on the line to make a good movie, he may feel more than justified in telling the studio what it can do with its demands.
What demands are we talking about? Well, while the story has yet to be confirmed by either Tom Cruise or Paramount, in March stories surfaced of their respective lawyers clashing, with their main point of contention being next year’s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One. Paramount — who made it clear last year they want to shift their focus to streaming — wants to give the movie 45 days in theaters before streaming it on Paramount+. That doesn’t sit well with Cruise, who wants his usual 3 month theatrical window.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Mission: Impossible dust-up is only one disagreement between Paramount and Tom Cruise, though quite a lot of them likewise revolve around streaming. The studio reportedly approached Cruise for permission to make a Mission: Impossible TV series as well as another series based on Cruise’s 1990 film Days of Thunder, and the actor gave both ideas a thumbs down.
Regardless, Paramount can’t be too angry at Tom Cruise. The actor recently returned to one of his signature roles in Top Gun: Maverick, and succeeded in going above and beyond all expectations in terms of ticket sales. Whether the studio wants to focus on streaming or not, if an actor gives them a movie that makes more than $1 billion, they should probably just say “yes” to him every now and then.
