When “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” hit theaters in 2025, it brought an end (at least temporarily) to one of Hollywood’s longest-running action franchises and signaled a new beginning for one of its most bankable stars. Tom Cruise has played Ethan Hunt eight times since the first “Mission: Impossible” movie opened in 1996, and the series took up a large plurality of his time in the 2010s and early 2020s. It was time well spent, as Cruise’s commitment to ever-expanding practical stunts gave us some of the most riveting blockbusters of the past decade. But it came at the cost of stretching his other acting muscles, and many a cinephile has openly wished that he’d go back to riskier fare like “Magnolia” and “Eyes Wide Shut” when his blockbuster days were over.
For a moment, it seemed like that wish was about to be granted. Cruise smoothly navigated the publicity surrounding his exit from the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, aligning himself with Warner Bros. Discovery and teasing a wide range of upcoming projects ranging from a “Tropic Thunder” spinoff about Les Grossman to a mysterious musical with longtime collaborator Christopher McQuarrie. And he couldn’t have picked a more challenging role for his first film with Warner Bros., teaming up with Alejandro González Iñárritu for the apocalyptic black comedy “Digger.” Even if he still had “Top Gun 3” in development at Paramount, an era of Tom Cruise movies that was less defined by franchises and reboots was a welcome development.
But this weekend’s news that Cruise’s next project will be a “Days of Thunder” sequel directed by Jonathan Levine makes his new career arc harder to categorize. The Tony Scott film set in the world of NASCAR was a modest success in 1990, but it hardly stands out in a filmography that’s filled with classics at every turn (it’s basically “Top Gun” on a track). Rumors of the sequel’s development have circulated for years, but it’s fair to wonder why Cruise wants to suit up as race car driver Cole Trickle again nearly 40 years later.
Perhaps the success of “F1” convinced Cruise and “Days of Thunder” producer Jerry Bruckheimer that there was an appetite for more racing movies. (Though it’s worth noting that Formula 1’s popularity as a sport has been surging while NASCAR’s has significantly declined from its mid-2000s peak.) A more cynical worldview might lead you to less generous theories. Cruise could be bearish about “Digger‘s” commercial prospects and looking for a safer follow-up from one of his few older blockbusters that he has yet to revive. Or the 64-year-old could simply be looking for “Top Gun”-esque roles that allow him to perform breathtaking action sequences while sitting down in the relative comfort of a vehicle — no cliff jumping, Burj Khalifa climbing, or hanging off the side of a plane required.
Of course, the announcement of one movie is not enough data to draw sweeping conclusions about Cruise’s career trajectory. The actor has always been open about his desire to work in a variety of genres, saying “I will never stop doing action, I will never stop doing drama, comedy films” in a 2025 interview in which he declared his intentions to keep acting past the age of 100. And there’s no reason he can’t strike a healthy balance of franchises and auteur fare moving forward — studios and theater owners will certainly be grateful if the pipeline of summer blockbusters from one of our last true movie stars stays open. But the next few years could reveal a lot about what Cruise wants to do next.
He’ll have plenty of opportunities to pivot based on those results, as his schedule seems wide open. As of now, “Digger” and “Days of Thunder 2” are the only films on Cruise’s slate with release dates. Most of the other projects he has announced — the World War II action thriller “Broadsword” and the aforementioned Les Grossman comedy and untitled musical — were developed alongside McQuarrie. The two longtime collaborators appear to be taking a break, with McQuarrie directing Arnold Schwarzenegger in a “King Conan” movie for 20th Century Studios, so it’s unclear if or when schedules will align for any of those films to materialize.
If “Digger” is a success that catapults Cruise into the Oscar race, perhaps he’ll be open to calls from the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson and Martin Scorsese again. And maybe that will still be true if the movie flops. But it’s just as easy to picture a world where the risky endeavor sends Cruise back to the relative comfort of legacy blockbuster sequels. More “Top Gun” movies could keep him busy into his 70s, and we can’t entirely rule out a return to “Mission: Impossible” as long as he’s physically able to outrun explosions.
It’s hard to imagine that the performance of any individual film will do much to limit Cruise’s options. His star power, both domestically and abroad, is a rare constant in an ever-changing industry. But he’ll have to make his own decisions about the direction he wants his later career to take. Options for aging actors have considerably expanded, as the likes of Harrison Ford have proven that it’s possible to keep leading action films into your 80s. But Cruise also has the kind of gravitas to transition into the kind of run that Paul Newman enjoyed later in his career, playing age-appropriate roles in films like “The Verdict” and “The Color of Money” that allowed him to remain a leading man without clinging to youth.
40 years into his Hollywood career, Cruise is still able to draw crowds as a hero who saves the world. It remains to be seen how long that will last if he’s content to maintain the status quo, but opportunities abound if he wants to get ahead of Father Time and transition into a different type of acting. Nothing is changing overnight, but the outcome of “Digger” and “Days of Thunder 2” should tell us a lot about the version of Cruise we’ll see in the 2030s — and if his claims about his own longevity are to be believed, the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s as well.
