It was all looking so good for Tom Cruise’s latest project. Doug Liman and Ana De Armas were on board Deeper, and it was set to start shooting next month. Then, maybe it wasn’t.
Why would the latest project from Hollywood’s leading (maybe only remaining) movie star suddenly look like it is in trouble? It has come down to money. The project is set up at Warner Bros. Pictures with a $200 million budget. Now, according to reports at Puck News, the costs were looking higher.
Cruise, also a producer, was pushing for a $275 million budget. The reports say that Warners were fully behind the $200 million, and even willing to go as high as $230 million, but they won’t go any higher.
The reason? As seemingly bankable as Cruise is, forays outside Top Gun and Mission: Impossible haven’t always been massive successes at the box office, and the last two Mission: Impossible movies had such gargantuan budgets that they will barely make a profit, if at all. Think on that for a moment. The concluding movies in one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises, which have grossed around half a billion dollars each, may still make a loss.
So it is completely understandable that Warner Bros. may be gun-shy of ever-increasing budgets here.
This sudden halt has led to Cruise and his team racing to relocate the film to another studio in time for the shoot to begin. Something that would usually feel somewhat unthinkable in times gone by. Is this a symptom of a bigger shift in Hollywood thinking?
Deeper stars Cruise as a disgraced astronaut who embarks on a deep-sea mission to explore a recently discovered ocean trench, only to encounter a mysterious and dangerous force.
As of now, it must be listed as “at risk” until a new home is found.
