Tom Cruise wants to make The Abyss on steroids—At a huge cost –

Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman—who previously teamed up for Edge of Tomorrow—are cooking up an ambitious sci-fi film titled Deeper. It’s a full-blown prestige project, with Cruise set to play an astronaut recruited for a mysterious deep-sea mission. His task? To dive into a massive, otherworldly hole at the bottom of the ocean—where he encounters something unexplainable and (naturally) extremely dangerous.

From the start, Deeper came with a hefty price tag: over $200 million. But that wasn’t enough for Cruise, who reportedly pushed for a budget closer to $275 million—a number that made Warner Bros. back out. It’s simply too expensive, well beyond what the studio is currently willing to risk.

Still, few stars draw attention quite like Cruise. And now Universal appears to be biting. The actor and his team are exploring whether Universal might be the better fit for Deeper after all. But the clock is ticking—they aim to start filming as early as August.

Warner’s caution is understandable. It’s become something of a mantra under David Zaslav and the new leadership: no greenlights for massive original projects without clear guarantees. On top of that, Cruise’s two most recent mega-productions—Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and the upcoming Final Reckoning—haven’t exactly been box office gold.

Still, we can’t deny that Deeper sounds pretty damn cool—at least on paper. It brings to mind ’80s deep-sea sci-fi classics like The Abyss, DeepStar Six, and Leviathan. So here’s hoping the Universal deal lands, and that filming can kick off in August as planned.