How old is Tom Cruise? Does it matter? Not to the actor who is powering on without a second thought. Having just watched him in Oblivion, which I thought was rather good, he's just been attached to another science fiction film, and he's been on UK television confirming that there will be a Mission: Impossible V and he's returning to lead it.

Not only is he appearing in a new science fiction film but if it goes well it has the chance to become another franchise for the star. That is if audiences take to it.

Tom Cruise is a bit of a surprise really, he's fifty this year, still looks incredibly youthful, is fit as a butcher's dog, and can leap around the screen with the best of them, and by best of them I mean the stunt crew, not the actors.

Outside of the film world Cruise likes experiencing life to its fullest with fast vehicles and all sorts of experiences you could only truly appreciate when you've got that much money, he's even driven the Red Bull Racing F1 car and impressed F1 driver and commentator David Coulthard's circuit times. He likes speed and excitement. So is it little wonder that's what he portrays through his characters, even at fifty? Or almost.

It's also no surprise to hear that he's continuing that, but I can't help but wonder when he's going to have to turn down the dial and start thinking about the more serious roles.

What is surprising is that he's doing another science fiction film, not that the previous film Oblivion was bad, far from it, I just thought he had enough on his plate. Not so as The Hollywood Reporter have revealed that he's signed up for the adaptation of the novel by Japanese author Chohel Kamayashi, Yukikaze ( / ).

What's more is that the novel is actually a series of novels, so Cruise has another franchise to his name if the first film works. Even if it doesn't he can get the weight behind another film easily.

The story tells us that the series of novels were recently adapted into five anime films, two of which have won awards for their animation work, so there's a desire to see these made into feature films.

The quick outline isn't anything new either to the genre or to Cruise as it tells of an alien invasion which is beaten back by a specialist planet wide defence force. The interesting part of it is that the aliens use a wormhole that appears over Antartica and that's where the defence force attack, not content in just defending they go through the wormhole and setup a base of operations on the alien planet.

The title of the film, Yukikaze, is the name given to the fighter that the member of the defence force, played by Cruise, pilots.

Sounds interesting but we'll have to wait to find out more about it.

Still that's not all about Cruise this week as The Metro revealed what he was about to say on The Graham Norton show, saying that he was working on a fifth Mission: Impossible film, unfortunately he didn't elaborate more than saying that they were working on the script.

So that's confirmed, there's going to be a fifth Mission: Impossible, but then we've heard that a number of times, the difference here is that they're on the scripting stage and Cruise was positive about it.

I'm keen for another Mission: Impossible film and I certainly think there's room for more, many more, but is it the kind of franchise that could be handed off to someone else come the time? It could be and that's what we thought Jeremy Renner was going to be doing when we first heard of his casting.

Perhaps there's the possibility that one of these Mission: Impossible films he would handover?