Filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie has mentioned, a few times, that he and Tom Cruise were going to team-up for a “gnarly” R-rated movie. This project has gained enough traction to have been dubbed by online fans as “The Gnarly Movie.”
Last month, rumors were swirling about the film actually being a remake Clint Eastwood’s 1977 thriller, “The Gauntlet,” and that Scarlett Johansson had joined Cruise in the cast. The info was started by two unreliables: MyTimeToShineHello and Giant Freaking Robot. I took it all with a major grain of salt. However, the usually reliable EmpireCity then confirmed it with their own sources, adding that the film was set to shoot in “early 2025”
Now, we have Production List posting the same info with a January 5 production start date. There’s also an IMDb page set up for the film (not that it means much). I’m still not convinced, just yet. Warner Bros hasn’t replied back to my emails, and you would expect a trade to pounce on this news. We’ll see.
In Eastwood’s film, the actor played a police officer tasked with escorting a prostitute to Las Vegas to testify against the mob. As you’d expect, things go haywire and not according to plan. I’m convinced Richard Donner used “The Gauntlet” as a blueprint for his 2006 Bruce Willis-starring film “16 Blocks.”
Last year Johansson mentioned that her dream role would be starring alongside Tom Cruise in a movie. A week later, Cruise told ET that he was down to make a movie with Johansson and went on to praise her acting skills:
I’d love to make a movie with her. I’ve been wanting to make movie with her. She is enormously talented. So charismatic, versatile. She has great physical ability obviously.
Cruise signed a major deal with Warners earlier this year, kicking off a “strategic partnership” that would see him making “original” films for them, and a few franchise entries (such as the “Edge of Tomorrow” sequel). He’s already signed on for the next Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu film.
In 2020, McQuarrie teased this R-rated project as having a “very un-Tom character” and being “hard-edged.” We’ll see if it ends up being “The Gauntlet” which, by the way, was not one of Eastwood’s finer moments.
As expected, Snyder's latest is being torn apart by TIFF attendees. No mercy given. The film, which had its world premiere this evening, is being called by some one of the worst movies to ever premiere at the festival.