Actor Tom Cruise has been working non-stop for the past few years and has delivered some great blockbusters. The action star was seen in last year’s Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 1 and is also filming for its sequel. The actor also ‘saved cinema’ in 2022 when he starred in the blockbuster film Top Gun: Maverick.
Cruise has been rumored to be on the cast list of director Quentin Tarantino’s tenth and last film. Titled The Movie Critic, the film reportedly also stars Brad Pitt in an undisclosed role. While Cruise has never been in a Tarantino film, he was reportedly in the running for Pitt’s Oscar-winning role Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Will Tom Cruise Be In Quentin Tarantino’s Final Film?
Quentin Tarantino has always maintained that he would retire after making ten films. The filmmaker has made legendary films such as Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Django Unchained, and Inglorious Basterds. His last film, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was a love letter to the Golden Age of Cinema in the ‘60s while also being a revisionist historical fiction film based on the Sharon Tate murders.
Tarantino finally announced his tenth and last film called The Movie Critic. The director mentioned to Deadline in 2023 that the film was set in 1977 and that it would follow a critic who used to review films for a sleazy p*rn magazine. He said,
“He was known if you read the Popstar Pages…His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle [Robert DeNiro’s character in Taxi Driver] might be if he were a film critic.”
Recently, it was reported that Tom Cruise was in talks to play a role in the film, which would be the first time that the Mission Impossible star would be working with Tarantino. According to industry insider Jeff Snieder, who discussed the rumor on John Rocha’s The Hot Mic podcast, Cruise was being eyed for a role in The Movie Critic.
The duo on the podcast speculated that Cruise was up for the role of a yesteryear actor in the film. Jeff Sneider said,
“Tarantino is a student of cinema. [Do] you know who else is a student of cinema? Tom Cruise…The plan with The Movie Critic is that he will be reshooting scenes from other movies, right? Like Rolling Thunder…Maybe Tom Cruise is the movie star who is…recreating these scenes. Could you see Tom Cruise being in Rolling Thunder?”
The duo also speculated if Cruise could be playing an executive, much like the role he played in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder. However, no confirmations have been made regarding Tom Cruise’s involvement in the film and Brad Pitt was the only confirmed member for The Movie Critic.
Tom Cruise Was Supposed To Play Brad Pitt’s Role In Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
While Tom Cruise and Quentin Tarantino have never worked together on a film, the duo reportedly almost came close to working with each other on the director’s previous film. In Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Tarantino revealed that he had once approached Cruise for the role of the stunt double Cliff Booth.
Tarantino revealed the plan he had and the meeting he had with Cruise on the Happy, Sad, and Confused podcast. He said,
“We talked about it. He’s a great guy, and we really hit it off…The reality is, I had maybe eight different pairings of actors that could go together in a realistic way in this situation. Now, the ones that I got were definitely my No. 1s.”
The role eventually went to Brad Pitt, who won an Academy Award for the role. The film was the second time that the actor and director worked together, the first being Inglorious Basterds. Pitt also co-starred with Leonardo DiCaprio in the film, which Tarantino called the ‘casting coup of the decade’.
Still, many have been speculating how Tom Cruise would have played the role of the ever-friendly, yet mysterious Cliff Booth. Cruise working with Quentin Tarantino would have been the ultimate union of two cinephiles who have been working hard to preserve the culture of going to the cinemas.
In case Tom Cruise is cast in The Movie Critic, it would be the first time that the two stalwarts would be working together. On top of that, Cruise would be reuniting with his Interview with a Vampire co-star Brad Pitt after more than three decades.
