"Everything You Want In A Movie" - Tom Cruise Absolutely LOVED 'The Flash'
The Shazam! sequel has its wide release on Friday, and wouldn't you know it? Biggest news coming out of Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Studios is about the biggest movie star in the world gassing up one of their other, highly anticipated superhero flicks.
That's right. Tom Cruise was so taken by what he saw in The Flash that he rang up director Andy Muschietti afterwards to profess his love for the film, per The Hollywood Reporter.
"As an insider says, this was no casual messengering. A Warners employee brought the movie to Cruise’s home in Beverly Hills and stayed until the actor finished watching The Flash. It is unclear on what format Cruise watched it, whether it was digital or film. When Cruise finished, the movie was given back to the messenger who returned it to the studio.
"Cruise was so taken by what he saw that soon after, he reached out to Muschietti. It was a call out of the blue for the director. Cruise is said to have raved about the movie, saying something to the effect that Flash is 'everything you want in a movie' and 'this is the kind of movie we need now,' according to insiders."
If anyone knows what it takes to entertain an audience in the action-adventure genre while also grounding the human and emotional elements of the story, it's Tom Cruise. As the THR report explained, Cruise met with new WBD chief David Zaslav back in February, where Zaslav spoke highly of The Flash, in spite of the Ezra Miller controversy of it all.
We've known for a while that Warner Bros. has had tremendous faith in The Flash. They're premiering it at CinemaCon in April, nearly two months ahead of its proper theatrical release on June 16. DC Studios is very much in the midst of a complete reboot of all their properties, and James Gunn has said The Flash will reset the DC Universe as we know it.
It's one thing to have a bunch of major company guys say The Flash kicks ass. It's another to have Cruise — who Steven Spielberg credited for basically saving movie theaters on the success of Top Gun: Maverick — give such a ringing endorsement.
My only thing with this leaked report happening now is, it takes some of the shine off Shazam 2. That movie is already facing the ominous uphill climb of an early Rotten score on the Tomatometer (53% as of now based on 139 critic reviews). The Shazam sequel didn't have a bloated budget and seemed keen to build on the success of the first one.
Between the impending DC reboot, the lukewarm critical reception and now this story about Cruise and The Flash, I feel like it sends a bit of a weird message. IDK. Maybe it's just me. Feels like a weird timing situation. Whoever leaked this info to THR had to have a say on when it went live.
Definitely still going to check out Shazam! Fury of the Gods regardless. I had a lot of fun with the first one. Zachary Levi is excellent in the titular role, and this also marks the first project for rising star Rachel Zegler since her breakout performance in Spielberg's West Side Story. Somehow I feel like that movie is still underrated as hell.
But whatever the ulterior motives are regarding this Tom Cruise leak, it only adds to the positive buzz for The Flash and even with how problematic Ezra Miller has been, I imagine most fans will still be even more excited by the movie in light of Cruise's stamp of approval.
Quick nerd side note: Cruise has been loosely linked to the DC hero Green Lantern for a number of years. No idea what the meeting with Zaslav from last month entailed. In Gunn's grand announcement about DC Studios' future, he spoke of a Green Lantern series that'd take its stylistic and dramatic cues from True Detective.
Imagine Cruise making the jump to TV as one half of a prospective Lantern Corps. not-so-buddy-buddy buddy cop pairing. DAMN that'd be something, right?
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