Alfonso Cuaròn Wanted to Shoot ‘Gravity’ in Space

I wrote last week about the 10-year anniversary of Alfonso Cuaròn‘s “Gravity.” On Thursday, Cuaròn will be at a BFI event in London to present the film to an audience and participate in a Q&A session afterwards.

Cuaròn recently spoke to Empire about “Gravity.” He confirmed long-gestating rumors that he did in fact consider shooting the movie in space, but two main factors kept it from happening:

“[Money] was number one,” Cuaròn said. “Number two, and the thing that killed the whole conversation, was Sandra [Bullock]. Because Sandra had already suffered two airplane accidents. Not one, but two. For her, flying is a big sacrifice. And for her the idea of getting into a rocket or something like that, it was a no-no, you know?”

Shooting in space was not necessary for “Gravity,” the film ended up looking gorgeously authentic. Cuaròn and the his tech team worked with a “very helpful” NASA to make the film look as real as possible. The visuals in the film, especially when seen on the big screen, were stunning.

However, don’t tell Tom Cruise that. Three years ago, Cruise announced that he would be teaming up with director Doug Liman to shoot a movie in space. Last year, Universal Pictures boss Donna Langley teased that the project was coming very soon:

“Tom Cruise is taking us to space. He’s taking the world to space. That’s the plan. We have a great project in development with Tom, that does contemplate him doing just that. Taking a rocket up to the space station and shooting and hopefully being the first civilian to do a spacewalk outside of the space station.”

The Cruise/Liman project would not be the first movie shot in space. Last year, Russia released “The Challenge”, a space drama that had its production move to space for two weeks in early 2022. Of course, the fact that it was a Russian film, partly financed by Putin’s government, means we’ll not be catching it in North America anytime soon.