Tom Cruise to saddle up with Reese Witherspoon in western film ‘Paper Wings?’

(HMG) – Finding a director for  “Mission: Impossible IV” which is set for a May 27, 2011 release, has been a top priority for Tom Cruise, who reprises his role as secret agent Ethan Hunt and is producing with J.J. Abrams. Paramount.  But apparently Cruise is also looking to team with Reese Witherspoon to play leading roles in western film ‘Paper Wings’.

The romantic tale would see Tom play a rodeo champion who falls in love with an up-and-coming  country singer, played by Reese. The project has been on the cards for some time and was with New Line studios before it arrived at Sony Pictures. Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment is working on the production side of the project, and considering  Italian film maker Gabriele Muccino to direct. Spaghetti western? Cruise has never played a cowboy before, but Reese has taken several rides into country-and-western territory, of course, with her Oscar-winning turn as June Carter Cash in “Walk the Line” and, most recently, signing on for Sony’s “The Pioneer Woman,” the story of a woman who falls in love with a cowboy while on a cross-country road trip and winds up living on an Oklahoma ranch.