tom cruise

Folks, we’re finally going to hear Angela Bassett say the words, “Your mission, if you choose to accept it….” Well, probably. I haven’t read the script of Mission: Impossible 6, but I do know that today Bassett was cast as Ethan Hunt}s new CIA director.

“Witness the beginning of a dark universe!” The new trailer for The Mummy is going all-in on this Universal Monsters cinematic universe idea. (And also throwing shade at Dracula Untold. Wasn’t that the beginning of this thing? Poor Luke Evans.)

While Doug Liman may be hard at work promoting his upcoming war thriller The Wall, that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten about an Edge of Tomorrow sequel. Last October, Liman promised that the movie was still moving forward, with the director even going so far as to suggest that the second film would “revolutionize” how people thought about movie sequels. And now Liman has dropped a few exciting updates, including a new title for the film and the promise of returning stars Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. The short version? It’s happening, dopey name or not.

Here’s a story you might’ve missed this past week. With the Fast and the Furious franchise under his belt, we’ve sorta learned to take Dwayne Johnson’s star power for granted. After all, Johnson was the highest grossing male box office star of 2016, suggesting that all you need is a half-decent fight choreographer and Johnson to gross $100 million at the box office. That being said, there was a time not so long ago when Johnson could still go after major Hollywood roles and lose out to more established actors. One such movie was Jack Reacher, which was a role the actor revealed he lost to Tom Cruise.

Look, I know that Tom Cruise must be getting older. There are lines on his face that weren’t there before and, like many gym rats, he’s been forced to trade leanness for bulk over the years just to maintain his active lifestyle. And I know that, someday, Tom Cruise will reach an age where the aches and pains catch up to him and he’ll no longer be able to pull off at least three incredible stunts per movie. But you know what? Today is not that day, and if this new batch of Mission: Impossible 6 set photos is to be believe, this is not that movie.

And yes, all the sound effects are working in this clip.

Watching the Mission: Impossible movies is like watching Tom Cruise engage in a series of escalating dares. Like the Fast and the Furious franchise, each new M:I movie features an increasingly bonkers stunt scene, made all the more impressive by Cruise’s dedication to performing his own stunts (or as much of them as humanly possible). It’s hard to imagine how Cruise and returning writer / director Christopher McQuarrie will outdo Rogue Nation’s riveting plane sequence, but according to the producer of Mission: Impossible 6, they have something “mind-blowing” up their sleeves. How mind-blowing? Well, Cruise has been training for the stunt for a whole year.

Looks like Warner Bros. and DC are serious about this Green Lantern Corps movie, as the film now has a shortlist of potential Hal Jordan contenders. The movie is being billed as a kind of sci-fi buddy cop flick, with Jordan and his fellow human Lantern John Stewart (no, not that one) palling around the cosmos and fighting crime. Now that the movie has found is writers, the next task is to cast it, and today we know who might be playing one of the main characters.

Every year, when the bottom drops out of the summer movie season and audiences decide to stay home and watch television instead, some well-meaning critic will publish an article asking if cinema is dead. And every year, I pose the same question in response: “Is Tom Cruise still an action star?” As long as Tom Cruise is running across multiplex screens — fighting rogue nations, government consiparcies, and even the occasional mummy — there is still hope for cinema. Then, when Cruise’s career is done and Hollywood is in ashes, then, cinema, you have my permission to die.

Universal’s grand plan for world domination, or at least an intertextually connected universe of highly profitable event films, has been put in motion. Their Dracula Untold laid the groundwork by introducing fiction’s most famous vampire into the mix, solo projects for Frankenstein’s monster, the Invisible Man, and monster hunter Van Helsing have all been established, and now The Mummy, the first piece of the puzzle (let’s do Universal a service and call Dracula Untold a warm-up, they can take a mulligan on that one), is set to be unveiled.

Tom Cruise is not one for subtlety. After spending the last decade in peak physical condition and proving his prowess through a series of action films, the actor was seemingly worried that we still did not get the point of how impressive he is. So what does Cruise do? He signs on for Methuselah, a movie about a famous biblical character who lived over 900 years and was considered a great warrior and leader for almost all of them. Yes, Tom Cruise, we get the point. You’re amazing and will never actually die

Nicole Kidman recently reflected on her 11-year marriage to Tom Cruise and -- finally! -- expressed incredulity over their union.