Returning to a role that made you famous is something that even legendary actor Tom Cruise isn’t afraid of. Making a mint off of returning for Top Gun: Maverick, and poised to do so again with the 2023 new movie release Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, the past has served Cruise’s future rather well. Which is why I think the next great career move for him would be a potential legacy-quel to his legal thriller, The Firm, which is actually closer to happening than you’d think.
Don’t go expecting a new movie with the A-lister playing Mitch McDeere just yet though, as we’re still in the earliest phases of this project’s potential life span. Announced through Deadline today, author John Grisham’s upcoming book, The Exchange, would reunite readers with Mitch 15 years after the events that inspired director Sydney Pollack’s 1993 adaptation.
With publication set for October 17th, there’s no word on any sort of feature film options just yet. However, reading John Grisham’s synopsis of The Firm’s sequel, one gets the idea that there's a lot of promise for Tom Cruise to move away from action-driven spectacles. Though as you’ll read below, there’s still room for a trademark Cruise running spree or two, as this is what The Exchange is all about:
When last seen in The Firm, Mitch McDeere and his wife Abby were fleeing Memphis with the bad guys in hot pursuit. Now they’re back, fifteen years later, and living in New York where Mitch is an international lawyer and a partner in a mega-firm. His work takes him across the globe, and not always to safe places. During a trip to Libya, his trusted associate is kidnapped, and an execution is threatened unless an enormous ransom is paid. Only Mitch can facilitate the exchange and I hope readers have as much fun with the novel as I am writing it.
Admittedly, Tom Cruise’s stance on stunts is that he won’t quit them. Which is fair, so long as the man feels he’s up to doing things like jumping motorbikes off of absurdly high ramps into his seventh decade of life and beyond. However, that’s not to say that every Cruise picture needs to put him on the high wire of life. And admittedly, the synopsis above does sound like a movie that's firmly in Cruise's wheelhouse.
A potential adaptation of The Exchange would be a shrewd move to diversify the actor’s portfolio and reacquaint him with the types of movies he made before diving head first into action. Some of Tom Cruise’s greatest roles, like his part in A Few Good Men, and even underrated performances in films like Lions For Lambs, have already shown him playing more dramatically inclined parts.
However, if The Firm’s fast-paced conspiracy tinged tone is still present in its sequel, it’d make the potential movie even more of a fantastic prospect. Acting as a stepping stone between the pure adrenaline and dramatic powerhouse that the actor is, the hypothetical movie version of The Exchange would make for a good stop gap between sending the actor to space and grounding more of his future on this planet, with fewer stunts.
Should he not want to return as The Firm’s Mitch McDeere, there’s always the option of bringing in his TV equivalent, Josh Lucas, to continue his work in the character. Of course, the Risky Business icon would be the preferred choice, simply because he helped make the cinematic incarnation the most successful John Grisham film to be released into theaters.
The man’s already playing the legacy-quel game and, since Paramount is the home studio of The Firm, Top Gun, and Mission: Impossible, one could imagine an offer already being drawn up to make this happen. It's not like I'm saying the star needs to start committing only to legal dramas and giving up the physical stuff (while he can still do it), but this potential legacy-quel would be a good middle gear for a career shift back to more desk-based combat.
John Grisham fans, your day has finally come. The Exchange is set for release on October 17th, returning Mitch McDeere into the world of literature. Meanwhile, if you want to get all nostalgic and revisit the Tom Cruise version of The Firm, that title is currently available for streaming for those with an HBO Max subscription.
