Tom Cruise is just now launching the latest installment of Mission: Impossible. But he is already talking about a Top Gun sequel.
The idea of the sequel was in the works between original director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer until Scott’s death in 2012. Since then, it sat on a shelf. Now talk of getting Maverick back into a jet has kicked into gear.
“Justin Marks is writing the screenplay right now,” Top Gun sequel producer David Ellison said. “He has a phenomenal take to really update that world for what fighter pilots in the Navy has turned into today. There is an amazing role for Maverick in the movie and there is no Top Gun without Maverick, and it is going to be Maverick playing Maverick. It is I don’t think what people are going to expect, and we are very, very hopeful that we get to make the movie very soon. But like all things, it all comes down to the script.”
“I think this is a movie that should be in 3D and in Imax, and again something that you can shoot practically. As everyone knows with Tom, he is 100% going to want to be in those airplanes, shooting it practically.”
Tom Cruise concurs. He would have to be in a real jet for a Top Gun sequel.
“It would be fun. I would like to get back into those jets,” Cruise said recently. “It would have to be practical. I don’t want any CGI jets. I want to shoot it like how we shot the first one.”
If you remade Top Gun today with all the same actors it would be hilarious.
— Bob Barker (@papasuncle) July 19, 2015
Jerry Bruckheimer and David Ellison have both confirmed that the Top Gun sequel script would be about drones and would have Tom Cruise.
“The concept is, basically, are the pilots obsolete because of drones. Cruise is going to show them that they’re not obsolete. They’re here to stay,” Bruckheimer said of the Top Gun sequel plot.
“When you look at the world of dogfighting, Ellison added, “what’s interesting about it is that it’s not a world that exists to the same degree when the original movie came out. This world has not been explored. It is very much a world we live in today; where it’s drone technology and fifth generation fighters are really what the United States Navy is calling the last man-made fighter that we’re actually going to produce. So really exploring the end of an era of dogfighting and fighter pilots, and what that culture is today, are all fun things that we’re gonna get to dive into in this movie.”
Before his death, Tony Scott spoke of that too, saying, “It’s a whole different world now. These computer geeks – these kids play war games in a trailer in Fallon, Nevada and if we ever went to war or were in the Middle East or the Far East or wherever it is, these guys can actually fly drones. They are unmanned aircraft. They operate them and then they party all night.”
Tom Cruise says he is willing to star in Top Gun 2 if there are no CGI jets. CGI Val Kilmer is mandatory,
— Adam Wolf (@AdamWolf77) July 24, 2015