Tom Cruise is already thinking about playing in his new movie (one out of three he is to play in during the following months), a comic book adaptation, Hollywood Reporter revealed on Tuesday.

Cruise has teamed up with Spider-Man director Sam Raimi to produce Sleeper, in which he would play a covert operative who becomes fused with an alien artifact that not only makes him impervious to pain but allows him to pass the ability on to others.

An added complication is that he falls for his nemesis, the evil henchwoman Miss Misery, while on assignment.

News of the new project came just days after it was announced that Cruise was splitting with his long time production partner Paula Wagner, with whom he had intended to revive the once-great Hollywood Studio United Artists.

That scheme hit difficulties when its first project Lions For Lambs was a huge box office flop, while the studio's second production, the Nazi assassination thriller Valkyrie, has also been beset by troubles.

Besides Sleeper, Cruise is also reported to be lining up two other projects. Food Fight will see him star in a rare comedy as a gourmet chef who is forced to take a job in a school cafeteria, while The Tourist is a remake of a a French spy thriller about an American tourist used as a pawn in a spy game by a female Interpol agent.