Tom Cruise has solidified his action-star status with years of hard work and iconic action sequences that even left professionals in awe. With projects like Top Gun, Jerry Maguire, and Mission: Impossible series, he captivated audiences’ hearts. Given his status, even his small cameo can become a huge deal for fans. Recently, Melissa McCarthy’s new movie featured the actor but not in the way one would expect. In fact, the former has given his permission to let his work feature in her latest project, Genie (2023).
Screenwriter, Richard Curtis who is widely known for penning movies like Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), and Love Actually (2003) recently revealed that he took permission from the former before including his work in addition to running his joke in the film.
Tom Cruise Gave Permission to Use His Mission: Impossible Footage in Melissa McCarthy’s Genie
In the new holiday rom-com movie Genie, Melissa McCarthy‘s character, Flora experiences going to theatres for the first time. There, she watched Tom Cruise in his Mission: Impossible movie which ends up with Flora developing a major crush on him. She soon indulges herself in fantasy by dreaming about a life with the Top Gun actor. Not just that, being a fangirl, Flora fills her bedroom wall with his posters and even gets a sweatshirt with the actor’s face on it as a Christmas present from friend, Bernard (played by Paapa Essiedu).
However, this whole Cruise saga would have been a mission impossible had he not approved of getting featured in the movie. In an interview with PEOPLE, movie screenwriter, Richard Curtis explained that he took permission from him before moving ahead with the filming.
“We definitely had to ask him [for permission].” He added, “I mean, we asked him through his people. I’m lucky enough to know Tom a bit. He’s always been very sweet to me. And we worked on a film for a while, which didn’t happen.”
He further added,
“I don’t know whether it’s a favor to me and Melissa or whether someone in the mail room said, ‘This sounds okay.’ But it means that after all these years, I’ve at last made a Tom Cruise movie.”
However, this is not the first time that Curtis thought of collaborating with Cruise, at least when it comes to featuring the Tropic Thunder actor’s work in his projects.
Richard Curtis Planned to Feature Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible in Yesterday
In a 2019 interview with The Huffington Post, Curtis explained that his movie, Yesterday had several alternate versions of the wiping-out segment as The Beatles were the ones wiped out from the modern history in the cinematic piece. The screenwriter explained that he also included Cruise’s movie in the early version but it never went through.
He shared,
“At various points, there were all sorts of versions of it, and then we ended with a middle ground. There’s a scene on the plane where Jack is looking at an iPad, and my original idea had been that some movie star’s entire career would have disappeared. He was going to look at it and see that “Mission: Impossible” starred Jared Leto instead of Tom Cruise. That one didn’t get through.”
While he was unable to implement his idea in the 2019 movie, Cruise gave a thumbs up to let his movie clip run in the new holiday movie. Directed by Sam Boyd, Genie also stars Alan Cumming, Denée Benton, Marc Maron, Jordyn McIntosh and Luis Guzmán.
It is now streaming on Peacock.
