Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures
Tom Cruise may be returning to the spy thriller genre.

Cruise is known for playing Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible movies. His character first appeared in the 1996 film directed by Brian De Palma and then all of its sequels, with the latest and seemingly final chapter being 2025’s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. Cruise has some other projects lined up, as he’ll soon be seen starring in Digger later this year, but none of them are in the spy genre.

What might Tom Cruise’s new spy movie franchise be?

Per Jeff Sneider’s TheInSneider, Cruise is rumored to be meeting with writer Aneesh Chaganty about potentially starring in an original spy thriller called Doppelgänger. The deal is not yet set in stone.

It was announced in June 2025 that Skydance had obtained the rights to Doppelgänger. Written by Chaganty and Dan Frey, the movie is being produced by Ryan Coogler, Zinzi Coogler, Sev Ohanian, Chaganty, and Natalie Qasabian.

At the time, Deadline reported that the movie has “two very meaty led roles for an actor and actress,” though no official casting announcement has yet been made.

Sneider now reports, “I’m told that Chaganty has flown to Florida multiple times to meet with Cruise, and he is currently rewriting Doppelgänger to tailor the script to the actor’s specifications. Naturally, Cruise will only decide whether to officially commit once the final script is delivered. But for now, he is considered loosely attached, according to multiple sources.”

If the deal comes to fruition, the movie will reportedly see Cruise play a CIA agent named Veer. Veer’s life is thrown for a loop when he learns that Russia has recruited a man who looks exactly like him with the intent to use the doppelgänger as a mole. The chaos doesn’t stop there, though, as there may or may not be more than one Veer doppelgänger running around.

No release date information for Doppelgänger is available at this time.