Exclusive: Tom Cruise Returning For Oblivion 2, Plot Revealed
Tom Cruise is returning for Oblivion 2 with Joseph Kosinski coming back to direct.
He may be ending his time as Ethan Hunt soon, but apparently his time as the clone of astronaut Jack Harper is just beginning. Our trusted and proven sources tell us that Tom Cruise has signed on to return in Oblivion 2 with Universal Studios and Joseph Kosinski — who directed the original film as well as last year’s runaway hit Top Gun: Maverick — who will also return to direct the sequel. Set 15 years after the original, Oblivion 2 will see Jack, Julia, and their daughter fighting the alien AI Tet which has since repaired itself and is ready to conquer the Earth.
We don’t know if Kosinski will be looking to recruit other actors from the first film, but considering what we know of the plot, it seems likely there will at least be discussions about bringing back Olga Kurylenko to join Tom Cruise in Oblivion 2. Kurylenko played Julia in the first film: a revived astronaut who helps Jack defeat Tet. She’s since earned a long list of impressive credits, including playing the traumatized assassin Taskmaster in 2021’s Black Widow, a role she’ll be reprising in the upcoming Marvel ensemble film Thunderbolts.
It was Tom Cruise’s own daughter Suri who played his daughter in Oblivion, but whether or not she’d return for Oblivion 2 is anyone’s guess. She hasn’t done any screen acting since, and all you have to do is start making a list of all the girls and young women who have played Ant-Man‘s daughter to be reminded how often child characters are re-cast.
In Oblivion, the malevolent AI Tet takes on the human form of Sally — the director of the NASA mission that Julia and the original Jack Harper were a part of — to communicate with humans. With a villain known for having that capability and tendency, it opens the door for pretty much any of the actors from the first movie to join Tom Cruise in Oblivion 2, whether or not their characters survived.
That includes Sally, who was played by Melissa Leo (The Fighter) and the leader of the scavengers Malcolm Beech, who was played by Morgan Freeman (Se7en). There’s Andrea Riseborough (Birdman), who played one of the astronauts (as well as her clones), the skeptical Sykes played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones fame, and Zoe Bell (The Hateful Eight) as the scavenger Kara. There’s a lot of impressive talent there including two Oscar winners (Leo and Freeman) and one nominee (Riseborough).
Oblivion wasn’t particularly well received by critics, and while it certainly turned a profit — making $286 million against a $120 million production budget according to Box Office Mojo — it didn’t exactly set the world on fire. But considering Joseph Kosinski and Tom Cruise were behind one of only three movies last year to crack the $1 billion mark, it isn’t a mystery why Universal would green-light Oblivion 2 (or probably any other project the two went to them with).
