Whether it’s Mission: Impossible, Edge of Tomorrow, or the Paris Olympics, nothing can stop the Hollywood dream team of Cruise and McQuarrie.
Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise are often seen together even outside of their film sets. (PA/Getty)
Nobody does bromance like Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie. The idea of the actor-director partnership has been a Hollywood staple for decades, whether it’s John Wayne and John Ford, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, or Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L Jackson. But these two are special.
Cruise and McQuarrie have a very close bond, even outside of the 10 films they’ve worked on together in some form or another. The duo were spotted together watching Simone Biles compete at the Olympics in Paris, alongside McQuarrie’s wife Heather and Warner Bros exec David Zaslav.
They previously enjoyed some of the tennis at Wimbledon earlier in July and made the most of their time in the UK, sharing a VIP box with Taylor Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce at one of her Wembley performances on the Eras Tour.
The Cruise and McQuarrie relationship started way back in the mid-2000s. McQuarrie told Metro in 2023 that he and Cruise “met about 16 years ago strictly out of curiosity – we weren’t meeting to talk about any project”. He said they spent three hours just shooting the breeze about movies.
In 2008, the duo worked together for the first time when Cruise signed on as star and producer for the Second World War movie Valkyrie, which McQuarrie had co-written. But it was in 2011 that McQuarrie became involved in two big action franchises with Cruise at the helm: Jack Reacher and Mission: Impossible.
McQuarrie was on board to write and direct Jack Reacher, adapting Lee Child’s novel One Shot. And although Cruise was an unconventional choice to star — he’s famously diminutive, while Jack Reacher on the page is a six-foot-five giant — he signed on to lead the film and its eventual sequel. They went on to do well at the box office before Reacher hopped to the small screen, with Cruise left behind.
As for Mission: Impossible, McQuarrie was something of a saviour for his pal, hopping in mid-shoot to perform some rewrites on the script for fourth movie Ghost Protocol. His work on that film was uncredited, but it meant that he was the obvious choice to helm the follow-up Rogue Nation. He eventually received the sole screenwriting credit for the film as well.
Christopher McQuarrie stepped up to direct the fifth Mission: Impossible movie, Rogue Nation. (Paramount Pictures/Alamy)
At that time, no director had ever made more than one Mission movie. McQuarrie, though, bucked the trend and has since been the sole directorial voice of the franchise thanks to his innate understanding of the way Cruise operates. He has now directed three successive films in the series, with his fourth set for release in 2025.
The duo have continued to work together on other projects as well. McQuarrie teamed up with sibling co-writers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth to pen Cruise’s brilliant time-bending sci-fi Edge of Tomorrow and the star brought in his pal to help transform the script for The Mummy during its production. Some reports have suggested that Cruise was the de facto director of that ill-fated monster movie, so it’s no surprise that he turned to his friend to help him out.
Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise with David Zaslav watching the artistic gymnastics on the second day of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. (Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)
Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie now have one of the most productive partnerships in Hollywood. (WireImage)
They’re also developing a slew of other projects together, including a full-on musical, another original action film, and a movie that would see Cruise reprise his studio boss character Len Grossman from Tropic Thunder. Busy as always.
But it’s the off-camera trust and bond that has made the McQuarrie-Cruise connection so reliably successful. They understand each other as filmmakers and get on well off-screen, whether they’re cheering on an American gymnastics star or bopping along to Taylor Swift. You can’t buy a bromance like that.
