Tom Cruise knows how to keep things going his way! Being one of Hollywood’s leading men, he has continued to win fans’ hearts by working in films that enticed him to the core. Whether it be Mission: Impossible film series or his new addition to his successful portfolio, Top Gun: Maverick, he just loves working with scripts that can grab his attention.
Something similar happened to him when he got a script that was set to direct by Steven Spielberg. Having taken a liking to it, he pushed everything aside to make that film a priority.
Tom Cruise Loved The War of the Worlds’ Script!
The 60-year-old actor, Tom Cruise starred in the 2005 film, War of The Worlds which was helmed by famous filmmaker, Steven Spielberg. It was a massive success at the time which is not something new for Cruise and Spielberg but the script was something that totally enticed the former.
During an interview with Empire, the filmmaker opened up about how Cruise went “bananas” over the film script and pushed everything behind to be on it. The screenplay was written by David Koepp and Josh Friedman however it was Koepp who handed over the script to the director in “a piecemeal fashion.”
The script was only written 80 pages at the time which instantly committed him. After a while, when the next 55 pages of the script showed up, he passed it on to the former who totally liked it.
He shared,
“I got to Tom to read it, he flipped out, went bananas. He said, ‘When are we making this?’ I said, “I’m making a picture in Europe in the next couple of months so I guess we’ll do it next year.”
The director continued that Cruise asked him to move his film which was up for production for “ten months and I’ll move Mission: Impossible 3 ten months and we’ll do this now.”
The director decided to go with the flow which eventually made the filming first for this project.
Steven Spielberg Moved The Munich Filming to Work With Tom Cruise
The Jurassic Park director was ready to commence the production for his Oscar-nominated film, Munich starring Eric Bana and Daniel Craig. But with slight changes in the plan, many of the crew of his historical drama film worked on the sci-fi thriller film as well.
He shared,
“But fortunately, my production designer who was working on my European project just switched over to War of the Worlds, and I just brought most of my crew from my European project over to War of the Worlds, and we had a crew already hired. We just changed the payroll.”
Both the film performed well at the box office with Craig’s film that grossed $131 million worldwide receiving five Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Score.
Meanwhile, the film starring Cruise grossed over $603 million worldwide earning Oscar nominations for Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing.
Both films are available on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: Empire Via Web Archive
