Tom Cruise's "Mena" movie gets a new title - "American Made." The release date of his upcoming movie, however, was pushed back from its original Jan. 6, 2017 to Sept. 29, 2017.
Universal Pictures announced on Aug. 8 that the reasons for moving the "American Made" movie was due to Sony's "The Equalizer" sequel hitting theaters on Jan. 6 while Warner Bros toon "Ninjago" and Joseph Kosinski's "Granite Mountain" are slated to open the week before.
Universal Pictures also changed the original title "Mena" since it does not tell much at all, while the new title "American Made" sounded great with a patriotic tone, matching a real-life story. Cruise will play as the real-life achievements of Barry Seal, Variety reported. Seal is a hustler who ran drugs in the 1980s for cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.
Seasl was recruited by the CIA to run one of the biggest covert operations in the United States' history, making him a pilot unexpectedly. One of the operations was when the Reagan White House through the Iran Contra scandal almost brought down. Cruise himself is a certified and trained pilot, making him better fit for the role.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie "American Made" is directed by Doug Liman. It is financed by Cross Creek Pictures and distributed by Universal with other marketing duties. It is produced by Brian Grazer from Imagine Entertainment, Brian Oliver and Tyler Thompson from Cross Creek Pictures and Doug Davison and Kim Roth from Quadrant Pictures.
"American Made" is the latest collaboration that reunites Liman and Cruise, after making "Edge of Tomorrow" together in 2014. "Edge of Tomorrow" is a genuinely thrilling sci-fi action film that made the most of Cruise's charisma and turned Emily Blunt into a bonafide action star.
"American Made" movie generated headlines in 2015, when a plane carrying crew members crashed on the set in Colombia in September, killing American film pilot Alan David Purwin and Colombian Carlos Berl while seriously injuring a third person. Local authorities believed that the bad weather had caused the twin-engine Aerostar to crash. Good enough, Cruise was in production on the movie at the time of the incident, not on the plane.
Watch the video of Tom Cruise spotted filming the scenes in the upcoming "American Made" movie:
