Tom Cruise Has a ‘Total Madness’ in Upcoming Movie

“It’s scary and funny and beautiful. I know comedy is not what people expect from me, or Tom,” says the ‘Birdman’ filmmaker

The director behind Tom Cruise’s next movie after the new Mission: Impossible is teasing what to expect from their “wild” collaboration.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the four-time Academy Award-winning director behind movies like Birdman and The Revenant, told The Hollywood Reporter during his visit to the 2025 Cannes Film Festival that his upcoming movie with Cruise, 62, is tentatively titled Judy and just finished filming in London.

“All I can say is it is a brutal, wild comedy of catastrophic proportions. It’s insane,” Iñárritu, 61, told the outlet of the upcoming film. The director was visiting Cannes for a 25th anniversary screening of his 2000 movie Amores Perros. “It’s scary and funny and beautiful. I know comedy is not what people expect from me, or Tom, and making this film was terrifying for me, but I don’t like to repeat myself, and every film should scare you a little.”

Iñárritu’s 2014 and 2015 movies Birdman and The Revenant received significant critical acclaim. The filmmaker won Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture at the 87th Oscars for Birdman and won Best Director again for The Revenant the following year. Leonardo DiCaprio also won his first career Oscar for his performance in the latter movie.

“I felt Birdman was a comedy, a dark comedy, and this one was challenging like that,” the director told THR. “And Tom makes me laugh every single day. He has this total commitment, this total madness.”

A representative for Cruise first confirmed to PEOPLE that the Mission: Impossible star would collaborate with Iñárritu in February 2024. The film appears to mark a step in a different direction for Cruise, who has largely made action movies and sequels like Top Gun: Maverick and the soon-to-release Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning for the last decade.

Judy also stars German actress Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall), as well as Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed, Emma D’Arcy, Sophie Wilde, Michael Stuhlbarg and John Goodman. Iñarritu told THR that he just wrapped production on the movie in London recently and will begin editing the film “next week.”

When Cruise himself caught up with PEOPLE at the New York City premiere of the new Mission: Impossible movie, in theaters May 23, the actor said he wouldn’t change a thing about the action franchise if he had to make the eight-film series all over again. 

“I did the best you can, and it’s representing all the efforts of everyone involved at that particular moment,” he said. “I looked at it and I really see what it takes to make these movies and what I’ve learned about storytelling [in] this particular genre.”

Judy is scheduled to hit theaters in fall 2026.