Tom Cruise is set to venture into uncharted territory: a scary movie. The actor is reuniting with director Doug Liman for Deeper, a supernatural thriller now in early development at Warner Bros.
The news comes from a recent screening of the documentary Gaucho Gaucho, where Liman shared his plans for the film. “I have never done one [a scary movie],” Liman told Showbiz411’s Roger Friedman. “And neither has Tom.” Liman, who previously directed Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow and American Made, expressed his excitement at delving into the unknown with his frequent collaborator. Deadline confirmed the news, reporting that the project has been set up at Warner Bros.
The plot for this one follows an astronaut who encounters a terrifying force while exploring an uncharted trench. No further details have been made available.
Deeper has been stuck in development hell for a while now. The project was originally conceived nearly a decade ago with a spec script by Max Landis (Bright, American Ultra). Over the years, several iterations have failed to materialise, with Bradley Cooper and Idris Elba among the actors previously attached, and Kornél Mundruczó (Pieces of a Woman) and Baltasar Kormákur (Everest) once lined up as directors.With Cruise and Liman now at the helm, the project may finally see the light — or the dark.
This will be the third or potentially fourth collaboration between Cruise and Liman. The pair have also been developing quite the ambitious undertaking: shooting a film in outer space, with the help of NASA and SpaceX. It’s been a little quite on this front since news of this off-planet undertaking was announced in 2020, although Liman did provide a promising tidbit in August of this year, telling Collider, “It’s still a dream and a plan.”
If Deeper proceeds as planned, it will mark a significant change of pace for Cruise, who has tackled nearly every genre but has never fully ventured into horror (although The Mummy did have horror elements). The idea of the action star facing a cosmic terror is certainly intriguing. One thing is clear: when Cruise dives in, he doesn’t do it halfway.
Cruise will next be seen risking life and limb in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the eighth instalment in the action franchise.
