Variety outline Tom Cruise's future... new attachments to MOTORCADE, LOST FOR WORDS and THE CHAMPIONS

Variety have a lengthy breakdown of all the projects Tom Cruise is negotiating with the hope of starring in. A bit of a pointless article because it's common knowledge the two movies that will keep him busy in 2009 are THE TOURIST with Charlize Theron and the David Cronenberg blockbuster THE MATARESE CIRCLE with Denzel Washington. In that order also. But the trade is adamant that it's worth looking at what could be in store for Cruise in the future, even though with A-list actors like him these things change all the time. But anyway... Variety say Cruise has become involved with the making of the Len Wiseman (LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD) directed thriller MOTORCADE, about an assassination attempt as terrorists attack the president€™s motorcade as it traverses through Los Angeles. Cruise has supervised script revisions by Billy Ray (FLIGHTPLAN, HART'S WAR) with the hope of shaping it into a thriller he would like to star in. Universal also are hoping to entice Cruise for LOST FOR WORDS, a Working Title romantic comedy in which Cruise would play an actor who gets into a love triangle with his beautiful Chinese director and the filmmaker's jealous translator. You may remember we got quite excited about this project when Hugh Grant was set to star for director Susanne Bier and Chinese co-star Zhang Ziyi but he dropped out. I would love to see Cruise in this movie, a broad and audience friendly rom-com is just exactly what he needs. I wish he could be enticed to make this his next film, I think it will do wonders for him. Other projects he has been reading but is strictly not attached to at this point include... The 20th Century Fox romantic comedy WICHITA where we would play an undercover agent who gets thrown together with a woman who has man trouble. Said woman would be his VANILLA SKY co-star Cameron Diaz and reading between the lines, the attachment of both stars is dependent on them both wanting to appear in the film. And then of course there's the Fox 2000 comedy HARDY MEN with Ben Stiller which he has been wanting to make for a while and last week we heard was going through re-writes from MEN IN BLACK scribe Ed Solomon. That one isn't quite ready yet. And at the very bottom of the article comes news that Cruise has become obsessed with the idea of starring in a big screen remake of the British t.v. series THE CHAMPIONS about a team of government agents rescued from a plane crash in the Himalayas by an advanced civilization and given superhuman abilities. It's the Chris McQuarrie connection as he has been drafting the script for the past year or so and no doubt told Cruise about it on the VALKYRIE set, which has got the actor excited. The movie was originally setup to be directed from McQuarrie's script by Guillermo del Toro but this was the days before THE HOBBIT came around. del Toro will still produce. Variety say Cruise is likely to shoot the movie next year and it will probably be a big ensemble. But as I said his next projects are THE TOURIST and THE MATARESE CIRLCE, in that order.