Tom Cruise has thrown his support behind the Warner Bros.-Paramount merger, telling audiences the combined studio will follow through on a pledge to release 30 theatrical films a year.
Cruise made the comments in an interview on The Pat McAfee Show.
“I think it’s awesome,” Cruise said. “You know, here’s the thing. They’re going to deliver 30 movies. It’s a community to me. It’s not an industry. The people in these studios are not just people in the studios. They’re my family. I know we’re going to get those 30 movies. I want us all to come together as a community to help make those 30 movies. It’s not just going to be, you know, Paramount doing it. Everyone’s going to need all the help of every artist to be able to do it.”
Cruise, who worked with Paramount on Top Gun: Maverick, said the 30-film slate could grow to 40, giving directors and artists room to make the projects they actually want to make.
“Like you can have these artists, all these greats, they got to cut their teeth and learn in the same way that you get to act, and you’re learning. It’s, you take it and the next one and the next one. Every single one of them,” he said.
He pointed to filmmakers he considers peers as examples of the kind of opportunity he wants extended more broadly across the industry.
“The Iñárritus, the Spielbergs, the Nolans, me — all the opportunities that I’ve had, I want that for every writer, every director, every producer, every artist. And the only way you do it is we have to create an abundance. Its production begets production,” he added.
Cruise pointed back to the theatrical landscape of the 1980s, ’90s and 2000s, when multiple films competed for audiences on a single weekend, and said reviving that kind of output will take a group effort.
“I remember in the ’80s, ’90s, 2000s, you’d have five films opening on the weekend, and people [went] to the movie theaters,” Cruise recalled. “You see how audiences are enjoying that experience, but we got to make them… And we have to as a community. We’ve got to help each other to do it,” he added.
