Tom Cruise's dreams of becoming the first to shoot a movie in space have been dashed as a Russian film crew announced that they are on their way to the International Space Station to begin filming for a project. If we are to go by the reports, a Russian actor and a film director were confirmed to be a part of the crew. A Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft blasted off at 4:55 a.m. ET on October 5 in Kazakhstan with Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actor Yulia Peresild and film producer Klim Shipenko towards the International Space Station, NASA revealed.
The crew is on a mission to make the world’s first movie in orbit, a project that will help burnish the nation’s space glory. The launch places Russia ahead of the US in a race to make the first film in orbit.
A CNN report further quoted Peresild saying, "Everything was new to us today, every 30 seconds brought something entirely new. It is almost impossible to think that this all came to reality. I also feel like I'm still dreaming." The team is expected to spend 12 days at the space station.
До начала нашей космической экспедиции остается всего ничего — 3⃣ дня!
— Anton Shkaplerov (@Anton_Astrey) October 2, 2021
Сама 66-я длительная экспедиция, как ожидается, продлится 174 суток. А ориентировочная продолжительность работы участников космического полета, Клима Шипенко и Юлии Пересильд, на МКС — не менее 12 суток. pic.twitter.com/VT0PwESBA1
Peresild and Shipenko are set to return to Earth on another Soyuz spaceship on October 16, landing in Kazakhstan just after midnight ET the next day. The project marks the “expansion of commercial space opportunities to include feature filmmaking,” NASA said in a statement.
Peresild and Klimenko are to film segments of a new movie titled Challenge, in which a surgeon played by the former rushes to the space station to save a crew member who needs an urgent operation in orbit. The Challenge will premiere on Russia’s Channel One and it will become the first feature film to be shot in outer space.
The recent development comes a few months after Tom made a deal with NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX to film a $200 million space-based action film, directed by Doug Liman. According to a tweet by Space Shuttle Almanac, Tom was slated to stay on the space station and it was scheduled to happen in October, but no definitive date for his launch has been revealed yet.
Tom Cruise is currently busy shooting for Mission: Impossible 8 and recent reports suggest that he is learning to fly a World War II plane for the film. This will be the third film in the MI series to be directed by Christopher McQuarrie and is scheduled to release on May 27, 2022.
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