Following reports the other day that filming could begin in August, the new Tom Cruise-led underwater supernatural action thriller “Deeper” has been hit an abrupt setback.
The Doug Liman-directed film has been set up at Warner Bros. Pictures where the film was originally said to be set at a $200 million budget.
But Puck News reports that the cost is considerably higher with Cruise pushing for a $275 million budget. Warners reportedly had no issues with the earlier estimates, but the attitude has now changed – their budget ceiling for the film is reportedly $230 million, and they won’t go higher.
The abrupt shift has left Cruise and his team racing to relocate the film in time for its shoot with Universal Pictures in the mix to acquire. The project has already been in prep for several months, and so Cruise and the producers need to lock a deal sooner rather than later.
Cruise stars in the film as a disgraced astronaut who embarks on a deep-sea mission to explore a recently discovered ocean trench, only to encounter a mysterious and dangerous force.
Cruise is coming off the costly “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning” and “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” – both have grossed just over half a billion dollars each (the latter is still going), but their enormous budgets have made profitability on the films unlikely.
