It turns out that Tom Cruise almost ended up starring in Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim. This bit of information was confirmed by the director during a Q&A at the 10th-anniversary screening of Pacific Rim in IMAX 3D. The director said that Cruise was going to be cast in the role played by Idris Elba, and would have had a karaoke scene in the movie.
While speaking with Collider Del Toro revealed:
“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 [scene]. 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.”
A Tom Cruise version of Pacific Rim would’ve been interesting. Del Toro has been wanting to work with Cruise and at one point, while he was developing At The Mountain of Madness, he was going to cast Cruise in that as well. The filmmaker said:
“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**king 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.”
I’m not sure what the third film was, but maybe one day Cruise and Del Toro will work together, but at this point, it’ll probably be awhile as both are extremely busy working on other projects.
