Christopher McQuarrie is said to be directing a remake of the 1977 Clint Eastwood thriller The Gauntlet, with Scarlett Johansson and Tom Cruise circling.
It’s coming up on a couple of years now since Christopher McQuarrie hinted that he and Tom Cruise would continue working together beyond the next two Mission: Impossible films, both of which were yet to be unveiled to the world at that point.
McQuarrie didn’t give too much away at the time, simply telling the Light The Fuse podcast that “it’s kind of under wraps. It has neither a fuse nor a fuselage. Oh that’s not true. It does have some fuselages. It’s something we’ve talked about for a really long time. It’s way outside of what you’re used to seeing Tom do. It’s the kind of stuff I really love. It’s a little bit more in my wheelhouse. And yet it takes everything we’ve learned on this journey, which is making movies more and more about emotion and real emotional experiences.”
Fast forward to the present and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – one of those two Mission: Impossible films is now out in the world – while the other is set to release next year.
Following that, change may well be afoot for Tom Cruise’s career. We already know that the actor will be working with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the director of Birdman and The Revenant on his next film as he begins to shift away from the type of pure action roles that have largely defined his career in the last decade or so.
Now it looks like we have another indication of where Tom Cruise is heading next. Several inside sources have claimed that Cruise will be teaming up with Scarlett Johansson to remake The Gauntlet, a thriller that released in 1977 and starred Clint Eastwood and Sandra Locke. While nobody official has confirmed anything yet, this one looks pretty likely.
Not only does it match the kind of harder, grittier film that McQuarrie was referring to as being in his ‘wheelhouse’, but Cruise and Johansson have both publicly expressed a desire to work together in the past. The rights to the project are owned by Warner Bros, the studio that Cruise signed a deal with back in January.
In the original film, Eastwood played ‘an alcoholic cop tasked with escorting a prostitute from Las Vegas to Phoenix to testify against the mob. Plans soon fall apart as cops and lawyers are also involved in the plot to kill them both.’ Even a toned-down version of that story would still represent a grittier role for Cruise than we’ve seen him play for time and we’re curious to see just how much of that harder-edged 1970s flavour this project would retain.
Still, there’s nothing confirmed yet and even the Hollywood trades aren’t yet saying it’s happening. The pieces do all fit together rather well though, don’t they? When we do hear more, you can be sure we’ll let you know.
