Does Glen Powell Have Potential to Be The New Generation's Tom Cruise?
It’s to say that Glen Powell is one of the biggest up and coming stars in Hollywood of the last few years. He’s been in a lot of great movies that both critics and audiences have loved. His big breakout role was in Top Gun: Maverick, opposite Tom Cruise. There’s been a lot of conversations recently about whether or not Glen Powell has potential to be the new generation’s Tom Cruise. With The Running Man hitting theaters this past weekend, this seemed like a great time to discuss it! Let’s talk about it!
My Thoughts
So there’s a lot of thoughts that I have related to this topic and whether or not I agree with it. There’s been a few discussion over the last couple of years of the new generation being the new of older actors. Another popular one is Timothee Chalamet being the next Leonardo DiCaprio. One that’s sparked more recently, Glen Powell being the next Tom Cruise. I’ve never fully bought into the Chalamet and DiCaprio comparison, maybe it’s because I’m not the biggest fan of Chalamet. But I do think the debate of Powell being the next Cruise is much more reasonable.
The obvious comparison for them is the Top Gun franchise. In both cases, one of the films or THE FILM that flew them into stardom was a movie in the Top Gun franchise. Of course, Tom Cruise is the star of the franchise. Maverick is probably his most iconic character and people were so excited for a Top Gun sequel and it’s why the film made $1.5 billion. In that legacy sequels that got the critical acclaim Glen Powell was not a recognizable name yet. He’d been acting in things for years, he was in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over in 2003. He got his face slammed into a desk by Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. But his big breakout was as Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick. All of the other leads in that film like Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm, and more are more recognizable and established. We’ve seen them in different things before, but the one we didn't know was Powell. Powell’s character is designed to be a standout that sticks with you. He gets a great moment in the finale where he gets to save the day. He was one of the actors that people were talking about leaving Top Gun: Maverick. Ever since then, he and Tom Cruise have remained good friends. There’s pictures of Cruise attending the premieres of Powell’s movies like Twisters and The Running Man. So there’s a lot in here that could indicate that Powell could be the new generation’s Tom Cruise. Powell was recently on The Graham Norton Show promoting The Running Man and talked about Top Gun: Maverick and the process of getting the role, including advice he got from Cruise. The advice was “don’t pick the character, pick the movies and make that character good. That’s good advice and I think it is an interesting angle to approach a career. I think if he’s able to work with great directors and some of the top ones working today then I think Powell can really be a movie star that’s with us for a long time. He’s doing more franchise films, some of them with big directors like Edgar Wright with The Running Man. But if he can focus on directors like Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to The Odyssey or Quentin Tarantino’s next directed film or whatever it can push him to that next level.
One thing that I think does hurt Powell from being the next Tom Cruise is the current state of movie stars. People have been saying recently that there’s no more A-list, that the A-list is dead and actors don’t sell tickets like they used to. The Rock and Emily Blunt had a movie open at the beginning October and it opened to $6 million. People wanna blame Christy bombing on Sydney Sweeney’s recent headlines and I find that to be false because nobody sells tickets. Even some of the biggest names in Hollywood can’t get people to show up. When Cruise was on the rise as a movie star he was able to star in these original blockbusters like Top Gun and they’d make a lot of money. In the year 2025, that’s just now how movies are made or how they sell tickets. Glen Powell can become a big name but his sort has to be through doing big blockbusters as established IPs, like a Top Gun: Maverick, Twisters, or The Running Man. Last year he had a movie come to Netflix called Hit Man. I dug it, it’s a solid movie and I think it did good numbers. But had it gone to theaters I don’t think it would’ve done great because it’s an original movie and not an established IP. Unless Powell is able to break through the mold and make an original movie for $100 million and have it make $400-$500 million purely based on his name then maybe he’s in a league of his own, but right now I don’t see that happening.
Somewhat tied to the fact that The Running Man came out this past weekend, its box office numbers aren’t great. Its global opening was $28.2 million against a $110 million budget. That’s not a great number, it’s going to lose Paramount a lot of money. This movie needs to make around $300 million to be profitable, unless the movie has the craziest legs of all time it’s going to lose a lot of money. I’ve seen people on Twitter say that this is proof that Glen Powell isn’t as big as we think he is and he’s not the next Tom Cruise. Going back to what I said earlier, movie stars don’t sell tickets no matter who they are. Tom Cruise starred in the final Mission Impossible movie this past summer and it’s a big flop, not even Tom Cruise the guy that we’re comparing Glen Powell to, can't sell tickets. Also, Stephen King adaptations in general tend to underperform. This is the fourth Stephen Kind adaptation to release in 2025 and all of them underperformed, even when they got great reviews.
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