Tom Hanks has claimed that he was offered William Shatner’s flight into space first, but was unwilling to pay the proposed fee of $28million (£20.5m) for the privilege.
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The revelation comes after the 90-year-old Star Trek actor took part in a Blue Origin rocket flight from Texas last month (October 13) which saw him go above the internationally recognised boundary of space known as the Karman Line, reaching about 66 miles above Earth.
Shatner’s trip on the flight – developed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who was also on the flight – lasted about 10 minutes.
This was the voyage of the RSS First Step today. Its mission: encounter Earth from incredible views at apogee pic.twitter.com/Gzsnkv97K9
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) October 13, 2021
Speaking on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night (November 2), Hanks was asked by the host whether the story that he had been offered the flight first was true.
“Well, yeah, provided I pay,” the actor replied. “And, you know, it cost 28million bucks or something like that. I’m doing good, Jimmy, I’m doing good. But I ain’t paying 28[million] bucks.”
Last year it was announced that Tom Cruise had teamed up with Elon Musk and NASA to film a new movie in outer space, set to be directed by Edge of Tomorrow‘s Doug Liman, with the SpaceX flight initially scheduled for October 2021.
However, the mission on which Cruise was supposed to fly out, the Crew Dragon Axiom Mission 1, has since been delayed to early 2022.
Liman is in the process of writing the film’s script, and the budget is estimated to be around $200 million. McQuarrie, who is the writer/director on the Mission: Impossible films, will act as story advisor and producer, alongside Cruise, Liman and van Sandwijk as producers.
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