Christopher McQuarrie,Tom Cruise re-team

By Michael Fleming,Variety
December 18,2008

"Valkyrie" co-writer and producer Christopher McQuarrie is fast becoming a go-to guy for Tom Cruise.

The scribe is now working on three post-"Valkyrie" projects designed as potential star vehicles for the actor.

New Regency has set McQuarrie and Mason Alley to write "Flying Tigers," based on the volunteer fighter squadron formed to help the Chinese fight the Japanese before the U.S. entered World War II.

Cruise isn't formally attached. The "Top Gun" star has long wanted to return to the skies, and several years ago was attached to "The Few," a Paramount project about the first American pilots to battle Germans in WWII, with director Michael Mann and scribe John Logan.

McQuarrie also is writing and producing with Guillermo del Toro the previously announced United Artists project "The Champions," penning the script with an eye toward hammering it into a Cruise vehicle. The British TV series transfer concerns a team of government agents rescued from a plane crash in the Himalayas by an advanced civilization and given superhuman abilities.

MGM brass has long felt that the project was UA's strongest chance for a big-ticket franchise vehicle that could star UA co-owner Cruise.

But the Cruise-McQuarrie collaboration with the most urgency is Spyglass espionage drama "The Tourist." McQuarrie is rewriting for Cruise to star with Charlize Theron in the Bharat Nalluri-directed remake of the 2005 French thriller "Anthony Zimmer." Julian Fellowes originally scripted the redo.