It’s been awhile since he heard anything about Top Gun 2, but it looks like the long-gestating sequel to the iconic 1986 film that made Tom Cruise an action star is still in the works. Skydance’s David Ellison - who works on nearly every blockbuster Paramount makes - revealed a bit about the upcoming film’s plot.
In an interview with Collider, Ellison sounded excited to bring back Maverick, the character Cruise played in the original, and see what his life is like 30 years after the first movie. He said that Justin Marks, who worked on Jon Favreau’s upcoming The Jungle Book, is working hard on the script.
“He has a phenomenal take to really update that world for what fighter pilots in the Navy has turned into today,” Ellison told Collider of Marks’ script. “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.”
As for the plot, Ellison teased that it will look at the end of the “era of dogfighting,” when fighter pilots went head-to-head in the skies. Now that drones are being used, Top Gun 2 will look at how that affects the remaining pilots in the U.S. Navy.
“This world has not been explored,” Ellison explained. “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 it’s 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.”
Top Gun 2 has been in the works for years, but it looked like it wasn’t going to happen at all after original director Tony Scott died. But when Marks was hired in September 2014, it was clear that Paramount still had ambitions. The studio and Skydance have not hired a director yet, but whoever it will be, that person better be prepared to photograph Cruise doing death-defying stunts.
image courtesy of Nancy Rivera/ACE/INFphoto.com