Doug Liman’s underwater thriller Deeper is set to shoot this autumn, with Tom Cruise and Ana de Armas set to headline.
After a decade of aborted attempts, Deeper is finally going before cameras with Tom Cruise and Ana de Armas set to star. The duo have reportedly been training for what we presume will be plenty of diving sequences given that this is being dubbed as an ‘underwater supernatural thriller’, while director Doug Liman has probably been pretty busy too, we’d imagine, plotting how all of those complex underwater shoots are going to be handled. According to World Of Reel, the production is set to roll cameras in September.
We offered some thoughts a while ago on the project, which is set to be Liman’s first real foray into the horror genre.
For Tom Cruise, it continues the star’s delicate navigation away from the action blockbusters that have shored up his star power for over a decade. Cruise has already shot the tentatively-titled Judy for Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, which is described as a drama comedy with Cruise playing ‘the most powerful man in the world, who embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s saviour before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.’
Deeper then, looks to take Cruise further away from the action genre, and assuming it follows the plot of the original script written in 2015, it will see the veteran Hollywood star play Edward Breen, a former astronaut who volunteers to take a submersible craft into the deepest crevasse on the planet. The deeper he goes, the more weird his experiences become. It’s essentially a single location story, told from Breen’s perspective in his claustrophobic vessel – making it a potential showcase for Cruise’s acting abilities rather than his skills as a stunt performer.
Read more: Deeper | A closer look at Tom Cruise and Doug Liman’s undersea thriller
Warner Bros had been trying to get the project and running for a decade now, with Idris Elba and Bradley Cooper attached at various points. In the years since the script landed with the studio, original writer Max Landis has seen his star fall following multiple allegations of emotional and sexual abuse, so it’s likely the screenplay will have bee heavily rewritten – which is what happened to another of his scripts, Shadow In The Cloud, directed by Roseanne Liang.
There’s a suggestion that the film may yet prove too expensive for Warner Bros, with Universal said to be circling.
It’s been quite a saga for Cruise and Liman, in terms of collaborating once again after making both American Made and Edge Of Tomorrow together. Several projects have been mooted, including an Edge Of Tomorrow sequel and a film both set and more remarkably, filmed in space, but ultimately, it’s Deeper that will finally see the duo reunite.
More as we hear it.
