Tom Cruise Almost Starred in Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro Reveals

Summary

• Guillermo del Toro wanted Tom Cruise to star in Pacific Rim.
• The director reveals that Tom Cruise “wanted to do it” but that sadly a deal could not be made.
• This isn’t the first time del Toro has almost worked with Tom Cruise on a project.

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has revealed that he initially wanted Hollywood icon Tom Cruise for his 2013 monster-mash action movie, Pacific Rim. Speaking recently with Collider, del Toro explained that Cruise’s 1986 action-drama classic Top Gun was one of the movie’s that inspired Pacific Rim, with del Toro wanting to honor that by having Cruise play the part of Marshal Stacker Pentecost.

“Oh yeah. The two models for Pacific Rim, the two models for the screenplay, are Hoosiers with Gene Hackman and Top Gun. So, the part that Idris Elba plays, Tom Cruise was gonna do it, and I even had a karaoke. The deal couldn’t be made. He wanted to do it. We were developing stuff, and he couldn’t do it. I thought, “You know what? Let’s go with Idris Elba then. He’s a god.” Obviously, I had to rewrite it for that, but I thought it was gonna be an interesting analog to do that. It would have been a lot of fun.”

Considering Cruise’s penchant for stunts and doing things for real, one can only wonder what shenanigans the Mission: Impossible star would have gotten up to had he signed on to star in Pacific Rim.

Revealing that Tom Cruise “wanted to do it” but that sadly a deal could not be made, the role of Stacker Pentecost instead went to Idris Elba. A casting outcome that del Toro sounds more than happy about. As were audiences.

Dropping audiences in the future, Pacific Rim centers on an Earth ravaged by war with the Kaiju, colossal sea monsters which have emerged from an interdimensional portal on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. To combat the monsters, humanity creates the Jaegers, gigantic humanoid mechas, with the movie following Charlie Hunnam as Raleigh Becket, a traumatized Jaeger pilot called out of retirement during the later days of the conflict.

RELATED: Pacific Rim: How Guillermo del Toro’s Monster Film Has Aged After 10 Years

A Guillermo Del Toro/Tom Cruise Project Has Almost Happened Several Times

Paramount Picrtures 

According to del Toro, this is far from the first time that the filmmaker has almost united with Top Gun: Maverick star Tom Cruise.

“I have developed three movies with Cruise, and none of the three times we have worked, but we have had quite a laugh, you know? I like it. My life is so weird. I’m like Forrest f—ing Gump. All of a sudden, I’m in places that I don’t know how it happened, but I go, “Eh, I like it.” [Laughs] Honestly, I’m very grateful. There’s a saying in movies, and it’s a really great saying, they say, “Take the scout, don’t make the movie.” Because when you’re scouting, you are in basically a bus trip with a bunch of people eating in great places and having a great time. My favorite part of movies, like when I planned The Devil’s Backbone, I made an itinerary through Spain where they sold the best sausages, the best asparagus. [Laughs] We were in Scotland scouting for the next movie, I was mapping where there was a good macaroni and cheese pie.”

How do you think Tom Cruise would have fared in the role of Pacific Rim’s Stacker Pentecost?

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