Tom Cruise cajoled ‘The Mummy’ cast to do own stunts
LAS VEGAS: Tom Cruise is known for performing his own death- defying stunts in his action movies – but the cast of horror blockbuster “The Mummy” revealed Wednesday he’s started roping in his co-stars.
Annabelle Wallis told the CinemaCon convention Cruise convinced her to join him in a terrifying zero gravity plane crash stunt, when the scene could easily have been filmed in front of a green screen.
“Tom is renowned for making sure that the audience gets the most out of their cinematic experience,” Wallis, 32, told an audience at the annual Las Vegas gathering for movie theater operators.
“So when it came to doing this sequence we had options to do it on a stage. Tom, in his glory and slight madness, was adamant that he wanted it to be done on a plane in zero gravity.”
The scene involved 64 takes during four high altitude fl ights over two days, leading to “a lot of barfi ng,” according to writer and director Alex Kurtzman.
Wallis (“X-Men: First Class”) revealed that Cruise, in true action hero style, had no problems keeping down his lunch.
Jake Johnson (“Jurassic World”), who plays Cruise’s sidekick, said working with the star was a lot of fun, but a “terrifying” experience.
“We jump off buildings and towns explode, and Tom really does it all, and he insists his cast do it too, and I say the word ‘makes,’” said Johnson, 38, at the start Universal’s presentation of its upcoming slate of movies.
“Yes, I got hurt. My character dies, I almost died. We’d do a
Tom is renowned for making sure that the audience gets the most out of their cinematic experience. So when it came to doing this sequence we had options to do it on a stage. Tom, in his glory and slight madness, was adamant that he wanted it to be done on a plane in zero gravity. Annabelle Wallis, actress
stunt and it would hurt, and I’m like, ‘I think something went wrong because it hurt’ and he’d go ‘Well yeah – we jumped off a building, dummy.’”
“The Mummy,” which opens on June 9, tells the story of an ancient princess who is awakened from her crypt beneath the desert and unleashes a malevolence that has grown over millennia.
Sofia Boutella, 34, (“Kingsmen,” “Star Trek Beyond”) takes on the role of the titular monster – a female for the first time in cinematic history.
She revealed that she turned down Kurtzman’s job offer at first. “He offered me the role and it was an honour but I just came out of a movie where I was under a lot of make-up and I thought ‘not again’ and also playing a monster terrified me,” she said.
“It took a meeting with him and also understanding that basically the honour that it is to go back there... and play this character.” — AFP