I guess we believe Taylor Lautner as an angsty teen werewolf, so why not buy him as both Tom Cruise's kid and a pilot. Lautner is apparently about to get paid a massive $7.5 million to take a role in Northern Lights, a movie that will star Lautner as an "aerobatics pilot who faces off with his controlling, billionaire father and falls in love with a gifted female pilot." Given that Cruise will likely be playing the father, we can either think of this as a very depressing Top Gun sequel or simply a nod at self-parody.

According to Deadline Hollywood, production will get started on April 1 with Max Payne director John Moore on board. Now I have nothing particularly against John Moore, but I suffered mightily through Max Payne, and won't forget it soon. Of course he also made the flight-centric Flight of the Phoenix, so he's at least got some propeller experience.

The biggest news about this is Lautner's gigantic payday, and the sense that he's already of leading man caliber to star alongside Cruise. Given that Lautner hasn't carried a single movie without the word Twilight in the title, that's a pretty significant gamble. Robert Pattinson's projects beyond Twilight haven't really gone anywhere, though granted, he hasn't been groomed as a new star by a studio in the same way. But can the Twilight effect carry on without Bella lurking somewhere in the frame?

UPDATE! Deadline Hollywood seems to have gotten the story wrong on this one. We've been sent new information by a rep for David Ellison at Skydance productions. They say Tom Cruise is not going to be in this film and that there's no billionaire father involved in the storyline.