Tom Cruise, I’m sorry, but it appears that your ambitions to shoot the first narrative film in space have been thwarted. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying actor Yulia Peresild, director Klim Shipenko, and cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday morning at 5:55 a.m. ET. They’re on their way to the International Space Station to film The Challenge, the first film shot in space. The launch, which was live-streamed on NASA TV, went off without a hitch.
Cruise’s plans to film a movie aboard the International Space Station were revealed earlier this year by NASA administrator spokesperson Jim Bridenstine. It was supposed to be the world’s first space movie.
A few months later, it became clear that Russia would most likely beat him to it. The Challenge is a partnership between Russian broadcaster Channel One, studio Yellow, Black and White, and Russian space agency Roscosmos that “follows a female surgeon who needs to conduct a surgery on a cosmonaut too sick to return to Earth soon,” according to IMDb.
Director Shipenko previously directed Son of a Rich, Russia’s highest-grossing film, while actor Peresild has starred in a number of Russian films and television series.
They both got training at the Yuri Gagarin Center for Cosmonaut Training earlier this year, and they’ll be in orbit for 12 days filming.