Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie planning a musical and the return of Tropic Thunder’s Les Grossman

The creative partnership between Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie is easily one of the most successful in Hollywood, if only because McQuarrie’s work as writer (and now director) on the Mission: Impossible movies has completely salvaged Cruise’s status as a movie star (and that was even before Top Gun: Maverick became the biggest movie of his entire career). So it makes sense that they have a lot of plans for the future—even if not all of those plans for the future make sense themselves.

According to a new Deadline report, Cruise and McQuarrie have three “very different projects” in “the early stages” of development, and that’s in addition to existing movies from the two of them (like Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part Two and the thing Tom Cruise wants to film in space). The first of the new projects is said to be “an original song and dance-style musical” that will be a “star vehicle for Cruise,” with Deadline noting that Cruise has been “long interested” in doing a musical and that he learned to sing for Rock Of Ages 10 years ago.

Project the second is the most mysterious, with Deadline just saying that it’s “another original action film with franchise potential,” which could mean anything, but it’s worth noting that McQuarrie had a hand in The Mummy, Edge Of Tomorrow, and Jack Reacher, all of which were action films with franchise potential and only one of which actually got a sequel (and McQuarrie was only a producer on that completely forgotten sequel, so that tells you something). Basically, the two of them have been trying to launch another original action film with franchise potential for a decade, so this is nothing new.

Finally, and this is the most “lol wut” of the three, Deadline says that Cruise and McQuarrie are “fixated” on Les Grossman, the fat suit-wearing, foul-mouthed movie studio executive that Cruise played in Tropic Thunder. Deadline doesn’t know if that means they’ll craft an entire movie around Grossman or “borrow him” for either the musical or the action movie with franchise potential.

All of that is absurd for a few reasons, the least of which being that the few minutes of screen time that the character has in Tropic Thunder were already more than enough, and stretching it out beyond that in a way that isn’t excruciating sounds impossible. Also, in a world where people in Hollywood are speaking out against “Jewface,” are we really going to go ahead with Tom Cruise playing Les Grossman again? It just seems like a wild choice for these guys to make in 2022, especially if he shows up in a musical or an action movie with franchise potential—but especially if he shows up in his own solo movie. Just make up a new character with a different name!