Now firmly in the history books as Hollywood’s ‘greatest movie star’ after taking over the Paris 2024 closing ceremony, Tom Cruise is a firm favourite to play a lead role at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

Not as a competing athlete or International Olympic Committee ambassador, but most likely as the driving force behind the opening and closing ceremonies.

Cruise, 62, reportedly approached the IOC about doing a series of stunts to bring the Paris and LA games together.

British-born Ben Winston, 43, one of the most experienced live TV producers in the entertainment industry (Grammys, Elton John: Live, The Late Late Show with James Corden) worked with Cruise on the whole package from his daredevil abseil act into the Stade de France to the skydive into the Hollywood Hills.

It’s now confirmed Winston (Harry Styles is godfather to his daughter) has been tapped as the creative producer of the LA handover in 2028.

And all eyes are on Cruise to entertain the sporting world again.

“I hope you bring back the Top Gun: Maverick cadets for the opening ceremony,” wrote one fan on X.

Starring Tom Cruise author Sean Redmond tells The New Daily  “it was like the American dream had descended into the Stade”.

“Cruise is a symbol as the last great American film star, of the success myth – a man-made ‘mission impossible’ and a conduit for masculine authenticity (he does his own stunts – puts his body on the line – he is heroic and the ultimate professional performer),” said Redmond, an RMIT associate dean in media, writing and publishing.

“Cruise by suggestion or allusion is a worthy Olympian – a titan, a man-god no less, who descends from the heavens to a rapturous crowd …

“He is the modern Olympics personified!”

Tom Cruise on the roof of the Stade de France during the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on August 11. Photo: Getty

‘No better collaborator’

Cruise based himself in Paris for most of the 17 days of competition.

He was spotted front and centre at the artistic gymnastics, the women’s gold medal football match between Brazil and the US, and at the swimming for the USA 4x100m freestyle relay win.

In a debrief with The Hollywood Reporter after the Games, Winston says the original plan was to use a stuntman for the dive into the stadium.

“Cruise would have none of it … I don’t think there’s anybody like him in the world,” said Winston, who was creative director and executive producer under the Fulwell 73 Productions banner.

“There is no better collaborator.”

“I pitched it to Tom. He was the first pitch I had. If he hadn’t gone with it, I can’t really think who else would work.

“Who else is synonymous with action and an American hero? When we got Tom, I felt like the whole thing would work – so we went from there. But it’s been over a year and a half to achieve that.

“In a two-minute film we got Cruise handing the Olympic flag to athletes near the Hollywood sign (the Olympic rings were CGI), Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Billie Eilish.

“We had had the greatest musicians in the world on that stage. We had Tom Cruise, the greatest movie star, and we also had the best of the best in our industry come and deliver it,” he later told Deadline.

Cruise has commercial, ideological and cultural significance.

He flew a stack of the flight scenes in Top Gun: Maverick and performed his own stunts as Ethan Hunt in the MI franchise, going next level in that iconic vault scene.

“His films have made well over a billion dollars at the box office … they capture the zeitgeist of the moment with Top Gun (gun-ho American patriotism), Jerry Maguire (the rejection of corporate greed) and Minority Report (state and military surveillance).

“Ideologically speaking, he captures what it variously means to be masculine and ‘heterosexual’”.

As for the LA 2028 opening ceremony?

Redmond speculates Cruise might land a fighter jet (probably at Top Gun’s Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada) before riding a motorbike “carrying the Olympic flag” into the City of Angels.