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Tom Cruise’s new movie with Alejandro González Iñárritu given official release date

Sat 28 December 2024 11:46, UK

Tom Cruise’s highly-anticipated collaboration with The Revenant director Alejandro González Iñárritu has been given an official release date by Warner Bros. It will debut in IMAX on October 2nd, 2026, the date previously reserved for The Batman 2, which has instead been pushed back 12 months.

The project, which is still untitled, will mark Cruise’s return to auteur-driven filmmaking following the iconic star’s seven-year stretch making three Mission: Impossible films and Top Gun: Maverick. It will also be the first salvo in Cruise’s lucrative deal with Warner Bros Discovery to develop original and franchise movies for the historic studio – a deal that will see Cruise’s production company take up an office on the Warner lot in Burbank.

The project with Iñárritu has been shrouded in secrecy since it was announced, but Warner recently revealed a light plot synopsis. It reads: “The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s saviour before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.”

Iñárritu has written the screenplay with his Birdman co-scribes Alexander Dinelaris and Nicolas Giacobone and third co-writer Sabina Berman. Cruise will lead a star-studded cast that includes Anatomy of a Fall’s Sandra Hüller, as well as Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Sophie Wilde.

The film reportedly began shooting in the UK in November 2024 and undoubtedly sounds like an intriguing departure for Iñárritu. The Mexican filmmaker hasn’t made an English-language film since The Revenant in 2015 and has always gravitated to more experimental, cryptic arthouse films, as opposed to the crowd-pleasing IMAX blockbuster this new project sounds like. Fans will hope he and Cruise’s sensibilities bring out the best in each other.

So, what’s next for Cruise?

The “last movie star” has plenty on his plate before he and Iñárritu’s passion project hits cinemas. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will be released on May 23rd, 2025, and Cruise will be hoping to bring the curtain down on that historic franchise in spectacular fashion after the seventh entry stuttered slightly at the international box office.

It’s also been rumoured that Cruise and Mission helmer Christopher McQuarrie will team up once again for a World War II epic called Broadsword. That would make their fifth collaboration as actor/director, following four Missions and Jack Reacher, but their tenth time working together overall, as McQuarrie also contributed scripts and/or rewrites to Valkyrie, Edge of Tomorrow, The Mummy, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, and Top Gun: Maverick.