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| Thursday
September 11, 2003 |
| TOP
GUN CRUISE FLYS AGAIN WITH THE RAF IN BATTLE OF BRITAIN |
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Tom Cruise took to the skies (and international superstardom) in Top Gun. Now he's ready to fly the not so friendly skies again in Paramount's World War II-era drama 'The Few', according to Daily Variety.
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Based on a book proposal by historian-author Alex Kershaw
(The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day
Sacrifice) that has been getting top buzz around Tinseltown.
'The Few' would see Cruise starring as Billy Fiske, an Olympic athlete and pilot who, because he was also part British, defied U.S. neutrality laws in 1940 to lead a small group of American and Canadian aviators to join the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain.
The RAF sustained heavy losses in the early days of the war, and Britain was unable to persuade the U.S. to send its own fighters. That prompted Prime Minister Winston Churchill to launch a secret mission to recruit civilian American flyboys to fight against Germany.
At the risk of being thrown into prison back home, a small group of aces heeded the call and joined the RAF. (Spoiler alert: Fiske was the first American pilot killed in action during aerial combat in WWII.)
If Britain had fallen to the Germans it would have been all over for Europe, freedom and democracy. Hence Churchill's stirring words following the RAF's decisive victory over the Luftwaffe, "Never in the field of human conflict has so much, been owed by so many, to so few."
Oscar-nominated director Michael Mann (The Insider) is on board to helm the project with Oscar-nominated Gladiator scribe John Logan in negotiations to adapt Kershaw's book into script form.
The Few would mark Mann's second collaboration with Cruise. The two are about to start work on Collateral, a thriller in which Cruise sheds his good-guy persona to play a contract killer who holds a cab driver hostage as he goes on a late-night killing spree.
This isn't the first time Mann has tried to land a plane-themed project.
Following his 2001 box-office disappointment Ali, Mann began developing The Aviator, a biopic chronicling the life of weirdo billionaire airplane magnate Howard Hughes. After tapping Logan to write that project, Mann eventually changed his mind and turned the project over to Martin Scorsese to direct with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead.
With Mann at the helm, Cruise and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, snapped up the proposal for 'The Few'.
'The Few' is the third WWII-themed project for the Hollywood star. Cruise is also planning to reteam with his Minority Report director Steven Speilberg for Ghost Soldiers, a drama about the survivors of Asia's Bataan Death March that Cruise intends to produce and topline.
Additionally, his Cruise-Wagner production banner just signed director Peter Weir to helm The War Magician, the real-life account of British magician Jasper Maskelyne who used his skills at sleight of hand to trick the Germans in North Africa.
Cruise has not agreed to star in that film, however--possibly because he's just too busy. Cruise and Wagner have also optioned author Erik Larson's bestseller 'The Devil in the White City' in which Cruise would play another villain, a doctor who became infamous as a serial killer during 1893's World's Fair.
He's also preparing to reprise his role as superspy Ethan Hunt for one last go-round in Paramount's blockbuster Mission: Impossible franchise, to be directed by Joe Carnahan (Narc).
Cruise can next be seen on the big screen in Edward Zwick's action epic 'The Last Samura'i, which hits UK cinemas in 04.
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| "This
is the official RAF salute, right?" |
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