Tom Cruise had a mission and he chose to accept it: How the movie star kept Hollywood working during the pandemic
Cruise refused to be beaten by the covid-19 pandemic, leading one major director to tell him: “You might have saved theatrical distribution.”
Best known for his starring role as Mission: Impossible hero Ethan Hunt, Hollywood icon Tom Cruise emulated his screen persona’s knack for pulling off against-the-odds feats by ensuring movies still got made even at the height of the pandemic.
In a recent interview on ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show, Cruise recalled working “night and day” to help put in place the safety protocols that allowed his projects - and those of other filmmakers - to “move forward” after covid-19 began its global spread in early 2020.
“This is how we’re doing it”
At the time, Cruise says, he was in post-production on Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel to the 1986 classic Top Gun. He was also preparing to shoot Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, the seventh instalment in the M:I film franchise.
The 62-year-old, who served as both star and producer on Maverick and Dead Reckoning, told ESPN: “I was calling governments and getting agreements with them, and then I was sharing it with the other studios and my other friends, saying: ‘This is how we’re doing it.’”
He added: “I just kept everybody working. And then slowly, not so slowly, before you know it, we’re able to just make sure that we’re creating […] and just showing people: Look, we can do this. We can do it safely, let’s create whatever rules so that we can move forward.”
“The most Tom Cruisey thing in the history of Tom Cruising”
In a June 2021 interview with Empire magazine’s Chris Hewitt, Cruise looked back on the moment in early 2020 when covid-19 hit, leaving the completion of Maverick and Dead Reckoning up the air.
“[The films’ distributor, Paramount Pictures] shut everything down,” Cruise told Hewitt. “They closed down all of our editing rooms, our scoring, every aspect on Top Gun, and on our movie [Mission] they sent everyone home.
“And that was it. They were already making arrangements that maybe in a year we’ll do it, if at all.”
But, as Hewitt puts it, “[Cruise] did perhaps the most Tom Cruisey thing in the history of Tom Cruising. He looked Covid-19 right in its nucleus and refused to budge.”
“Saved Hollywood’s ass”
Filming on Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning finally took place between September 2020 and September 2021, before the movie was released in cinemas in July 2023.
Meanwhile, Top Gun: Maverick came out in theaters in May 2022, after Cruise had refused to countenance a pandemic-enforced switch to a release on streaming platforms.
“I ensured that Top Gun: Maverick did not go to streaming, that it was held for distribution,” Cruise told ESPN.
“I was calling all the theater owners globally, that have been my friends for decades, and the studio heads, and I said: ‘Look, this movie’s coming out, period. It’s coming out in theaters.’
And the film’s subsequent box-office success - it took nearly $1.5bn worldwide - has even led the legendary director Steven Spielberg to credit Cruise with “sav[ing] Hollywood’s ass”, by luring so many cinema fans back into theaters after the worst of the pandemic.
“You might have saved theatrical distribution,” Spielberg could be heard telling Cruise as they chatted at an Oscars event in February 2023, per Deadline. “Seriously. ‘Maverick’ might have saved the entire theatrical industry.”
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