Is Tom Cruise in Doctor Strange 2?

The reason that Spider-Man: No Way Home made so much money at the box office during the pandemic is quite simple. The biggest plot secret leaked several months before the movie came out. We then witnessed a massive number of leaks that confirmed that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield would be in the movie. The film’s main plot points also leaked in detail in the months that preceded the premiere. The same recipe should work wonders for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness too. The movie will feature several amazing cameos, and many have potentially leaked already. But now we’ve come across a Doctor Strange 2 cameo that’s getting conflicting reports: Tom Cruise.

Marvel has featured plenty of high-profile actors in the MCU so far. Some of them got prominent roles, while others appeared in limited cameos. Adding Tom Cruise to a movie that has “multiverse” in the title shouldn’t surprise anyone. The actor’s name isn’t such a big spoiler. But big spoilers might follow below, assuming the Tom Cruise rumors are accurate.

Spotting Tom Cruise in MCU rumors should be enough for diehard fans to make the connection. Cruise was in the running to play Tony Stark before Marvel hired Robert Downey Jr. So fans will always wonder what Tom Cruise’s Iron Man would have been like.

Is Tom Cruise in Doctor Strange 2?

A movie like Doctor Strange 2 can answer that question, at least in part. Rumors say the actor will play a different version of Stark than what we’re used to seeing from RDJ. It so happens that early Multiverse of Madness rumors said that the film would bring back an Iron Man variant. That was well before Loki, which introduced “variants” to the MCU. And it so happens that some crazy leaks out there say that both Cruise and RDJ will appear as Iron Man variants in Doctor Strange 2.

But unlike No Way Home rumors that provided a steady stream of evidence that Maguire and Garfield would show up in the movie, the Doctor Strange 2 cameo rumors aren’t always on the same page. Some say that Tom Cruise is one of the cameos that Marvel cooked up for the movie. Others claim that the prominent actor isn’t in the film at all.

It’s quite easy to explain these diverging opinions. First of all, Marvel might be better at keeping secrets than Sony is. Then again, the full Eternals plot leaked well before the movie hit theaters.

More importantly, Multiverse of Madness underwent massive reshoots. Marvel used them to correct the story and add more cameos. Therefore, insiders may offer conflicting reports about the movie. And they can both be true. Some might say that Tom Cruise isn’t in the film because he didn’t appear in the pre-reshoot Doctor Strange 2 version. Others might have more recent information on hand that claims the contrary.

What the newest leaks say

With that in mind, we’ll remind you that we recently saw a purported image showing Tom Cruise in a motion capture suit while supposedly filming Doctor Strange 2 scenes. But we have no confirmations for that one. Instead, some leakers say the actor isn’t in the movie.

Like BSL:

Or ViewerAnon:

Similarly, Grace Randolph said a few days ago that Tom Cruise did not cameo in an early Doctor Strange 2 screening. She then provided more context, saying that the cameo did not appear in any cuts shown to date:

Interestingly, Tom Cruise reportedly took a break from filming Mission Impossible last year to “pop down” in Atlanta. That’s where Marvel shoots some of its MCU movies:

The YouTuber said in a video that studios like Marvel might want to try to limit the number of leaks. One way to do that is to keep the surprise cameo out of test screenings. Or only show parts of unreleased movies so they can’t leak in full:

Given the back and forth on the Tom Cruise matter, we’ll remind you to take all MCU rumors with a grain of salt. Building up expectations might ruin your Doctor Strange 2 viewing experience, especially if Cruise isn’t in the film.

No Way Home had the same problem early on. The Maguire-Garfield rumors sounded too good to be true. Thankfully, we saw irrefutable evidence that the two actors were in the movie. Even so, some MCU fans were unconvinced. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness premieres in early May, so this gives us plenty of time to figure out whether Tom Cruise is finally playing an Iron Man variant in the MCU.