A lot of brilliant movie ideas never end up making it to the big screen, and it is quite a common thing in the industry. However, it isn’t every day that you hear that a movie that had a name as big as Tom Cruise in the lead cast of the movie did not make it out of production. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened with Warner Bros’ Methuselah movie.
Tom Cruise nearly played the role of a mythological character in a Warner Bros movie
Tom Cruise is one of the most established actors in the industry and the American actor is well-known for doing his own stunts in action movies. From jumping a bike off a cliff to hanging from the side of Burj Khalifa, Cruise has done it all.
Although Tom Cruise has made a lot of movies and received multiple accolades throughout his career spanning over four decades, the actor has not been part of many movies that revolve around the stories of mythological characters as such. Therefore, it came as a big surprise when he was allegedly attached to the movie Methuselah, back in 2016.
Tom Cruise was allegedly all set to portray the role of the titular character in the movie, Methuselah. Methuselah was the son of Enoch and the grandfather of Noah according to the Book of Genesis and he is also considered the longest-living character in the Bible as he went on to live for almost 969 years.
According to Deadline, the script of Methuselah would have focused on the “exceptional survival skills” that he developed after living on the planet for so long before he eventually died.
The Norwegian filmmaker, Joachim Rønning was allegedly also attached to the project at one point in time but unfortunately, the movie never ended up coming to the big screen.
Michael B. Jordan was allegedly cast for Methuselah after Tom Cruise
After Tom Cruise left the project, due to unknown reasons, Michael B. Jordan was chosen as the star to portray the role of the titular character in the movie, Methuselah. Joachim Rønning was from the project and a new filmmaker was chosen for the movie later in 2020.
Back in 2020, Variety announced that Danny Boyle would be taking the helm as the director of the movie Methuselah. Boyle was allegedly not too impressed with the screenplay, that Tony Gilroy had written for the movie. Therefore it was later revealed that Simon Beaufoy was working on a new screenplay for the movie based on Gilroy’s original screenplay.
However, due to unknown reasons, Methuselah never made it out of the development and writing stage and therefore never made it to the pre-production. There have also been no updates about the project since 2020 when it was last heard that Danny Boyle was attached to the movie as the director.
