“Valkyrie” scribe Christopher McQuarrie has three new projects in the works, all involving Tom Cruise (though only two have confirmed connections with the actor) according to Variety.
The first McQuarrie/Cruise collaboration is Spyglass’ “The Tourist”, which is a remake of 2005’s French thriller “Anthony Zimmer”. Cruise is set to co-star in ‘Tourist’ with Charlize Theron under the direction of Bharat Nalluri (“Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day”). “The Tourist” script was originally written by Julian Fellowes (“Shadowlands”)
Also on McQuarrie & Cruise’s collective table is “The Champions”, a film version of a British television property that finds a group of government agents given superpowers after being rescued from a Himalayan plane crash by an advanced civilization. Guillermo Del Toro is set to direct this United Artists picture with McQuarrie writing and co-producing. MGM/UA supposedly have plans to turn this into a Cruise-centric franchise.
The third project, to which Cruise has no formal attachment as of yet, is New Regency’s “Flying Tigers”, which McQuarrie will co-write with Mason Alley (who wrote for TV series “The Agency”). “Flying Tigers” tells the story of the volunteer fighter squadron assembled to to help the Chinese fight the Japanese before the U.S.’s involvement in WWII.
Now if only Cruise was aware that McQuarrie’s “Valkyrie” script was a half-baked exercise in anti-climatic tension that shouldn’t have been green lit in the first place. – Christopher Adams