For much of the past few years, Tom Cruise has been trying to stage a reunion with his A Few Good Men co-star Jack Nicholson—longing to reprise that special chemistry of yelling at each other, their myriad truths meanwhile going lamentably unhandled. Now The Hollywood Reporter says that attempt has taken on some urgency, as Doug Liman, director of one of Cruise’s many sci-fi movies Edge Of Tomorrow, has come aboard the action-comedy El Presidente, which would find Cruise playing a “straight-arrow Secret Service agent” tasked with looking after “America’s worst former president,” with whom Cruise has to go on the run following a death threat. (“It’s like Midnight Run meets Guarding Tess, with a little bit of Rain Man,” someone probably said.)
Cruise has been trying to get El Presidente off the ground since at least 2010, at one point even considering having Robert Downey Jr. play the president, in what would certainly be a bizarre alternate universe vision of America. But now Liman and Cruise have reportedly visited Nicholson’s mansion to cajole the more-or-less retired actor into committing to the project, with Cruise declaring “he won’t do the movie without him.” For his part, at least, Nicholson has consented to read the script, which would find him playing “an alcoholic and womanizing sleazebag,” according to THR. And besides the fact that Nicholson could literally do that role tomorrow, in his pajamas, you have to assume that the promise of getting to toy with Tom Cruise again is pretty alluring. It would also probably stop Cruise coming to his house.