There may be no bigger modern-day champion of the big screen than Tom Cruise. Say what you want about him, but he has literally risked his life for movies, and two people who really appreciate that are Sinners star Michael B. Jordan and director Ryan Coogler. The longtime collaborators, and self-proclaimed movie nerds, recently sat down to talk about their 2025 movie release and blockbuster horror hit, and Jordan revealed he’d had a full-on film summit with the Top Gun mega star. Meanwhile, fans immediately noticed that Coogler sounded just a tiny bit salty about being left out.
The moment Tom Cruise’s name entered the chat during an interview with EW, Jordan lit up like someone describing their favorite roller coaster. Coogler—who has made some of the decade’s biggest movies—admitted he still hasn’t met the action icon. Jordan recalled:
I was in pre-production on [The Thomas Crown Affair] and having the chance to like, you know, sit down with Tom and talk to him.
Coogler’s reaction was peak relatable. He replied:
I still haven’t met him yet.
Jordan instantly tried to make it better. He reassured the director, saying:
Oh man, he loves you, bro. I showed him the Sinners trailer before it dropped, and he lost his mind. He was like, ‘Oh my god, this is going to be great! This is incredible!’ He’s really excited about it.
In Hollywood terms, that’s basically a knighthood. And the whole exchange is so entertaining that you really do need to see it for yourself.
Honestly, this crossover has been building for a while. Cruise—who rarely posts about films that aren’t his own—made headlines when he publicly praised Sinners. His Instagram shout-out surprised fans, mainly because the actor and stuntman tends to keep his social media strictly Mission: Impossible–coded. When he breaks the pattern, it means something really impressed him.
Jordan, in turn, pulled up to support Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning in IMAX, essentially closing the loop on this very wholesome movie-buff bromance. As the Creed star has admitted in other interviews, he’s a sucker for premium formats and cinematic spectacle, so of course a Tom Cruise outing was going to be his jam. (He’s also still grieving the Princess Mononoke IMAX re-release he missed, which is extremely relatable.)
It definitely feels like Jordan has entered Tom Cruise’s inner circle, leaving Coogler to joke about still not having met the blockbuster legend—which only makes the dynamic funnier. However, if the Mummy star is already this fired up about the Black Panther director’s work, their eventual meeting seems inevitable.
The Minority Report actor's stamp of approval also doesn’t hurt Sinners, which has already become a box-office force and earned unusually enthusiastic praise from across Hollywood. The longtime Ethan Hunt performer, who Steven Spielberg famously credited with “saving theaters” thanks to Top Gun: Maverick, has made a habit of publicly supporting other filmmakers’ successes. Seeing him champion a new horror movie that isn’t based on prior IP feels like a perfect continuation of that movie-lover energy.
If you want to revisit—or finally check out—one of Tom Cruise’s favorite (and biggest) movies of the year, Sinners is now streaming with an HBO Max subscription.
