One Million dollars for Three Hours of filming: Tom Cruise Treated himself to One of the Most Expensive Scenes in Cinema History
Tom Cruise is a star of many big-budget action hits. Surprisingly, one of the most expensive scenes in cinema history and in his career involved zero stunts and comes from a psychological movie.
Tom Cruise is one of the biggest Hollywood’s stars. The actor earns millions and stars in big-budget action hits as Top Gun: Maverick or Mission: Impossible. Surprisingly, one of his most expensive scenes and the most expensive scenes in cinema in general does not involve special effects or stunt performances.
Psychological movie Vanilla Sky, a remake of the Spanish film Open Your Eyes, hit theaters in 2001. It is in Cameron Crowe's production that we find one of the most expensive scenes in Tom Cruise's career. The scene took place in Times Square, cost $1 million and depicted David parking his car in the middle of completely empty street and then running around.
Anyone who has been to New York knows well that Times Square is one of the busiest places in the city, day or night, always bustling with pedestrians or tourists. However, on a November morning at 4:30 AM, Tom Cruise had this street all to himself for four hours – because it was shut down for Cameron Crowe's movie.
To make this happen, Tom Cruise and film's producers met with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The politician granted permission to shoot the scene, which was intended to promote the city worldwide.
Interestingly, the crew was very efficient with their task, and they ended up having over an hour to spare. Tom Cruise then came up with the idea (via The Playlist) to run in all directions while the camera captured it.
And Tom Cruise says, “I’ll just run. I’ll just run back and forth and you can do running shots.” Which was what the mayor’s office was afraid we’d be doing. We had an hour and 15 minutes or so left, so Tom just ran. And it was beautiful – Crowe explains.
It was how one of Cruise's most impressive movie scenes was made.
