While he’s been on the promotional tour for his latest big-budget action-adventure starring vehicle, Tom Cruise has confirmed a long-awaited sequel to one of his others. Appearing on Australian morning TV talk show “Sunrise” (of all the places he could making this huge announcement) to promote his new remake of “The Mummy” franchise (Tom Cruise > Brendan Fraser), Cruise announced that a sequel to his immensely popular Navy recruitment video “Top Gun” is officially in the works, with the cameras set to begin rolling in 2018.
Joseph Kosinski is the frontrunner to direct the sequel
The reason for the delays on making “Top Gun 2” is down to Tony Scott, the director of the original, tragically committing suicide a few years ago. It didn’t seem right doing it without him. But a few months passed, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer got dollar signs in his eyes and changed his mind.
Joseph Kosinski is the top choice to direct the new “Top Gun” follow-up. You may know Kosinski from his neon orgy “Tron: Legacy” or his wonderful, mind-bending sci-fi “Oblivion,” also starring Cruise. He’s currently working on “Granite Mountain,” a promising-looking drama movie about firefighters. Kosinski has yet to be offered the job properly, though, and Cruise has been meeting with a handful of possible directors, but he has a brief history with this one.
The aim here is to have the “Top Gun” sequel raring to go, engines at the ready (car analogy, but still works), by the time Cruise wraps up the sixth “Mission: Impossible” movie.
It’s the perfect time for a ‘Top Gun’ sequel in today’s climate
Now, it may seem like a sequel to “Top Gun” is a few decades too late, since glorifying the military brings up moral issues these days and no one wants to see Donald Trump sending Maverick and Iceman to Syria to bomb the Assad.
It’s just not fun.
But now is a great time to do a nostalgic “T2 Trainspotting”-style postscript kind of sequel, what with dogfighting in combat dying out and drone technology becoming more advanced. The world doesn’t need Maverick anymore, and he’s aging, and that’s tragic. It could be a great story. The most recent draft of “Top Gun 2” was written by Justin Marks.
Marks is a writer who’s often linked with films that linger in development hell forever, so it’s good to see one of his projects finally getting somewhere.
Anyway, while Cruise gets shooting “Mission: Impossible 6” and putting together “Top Gun 2” (busy, busy, busy!), his latest Film, Universal’s new “The Mummy” reboot opens on 9 June, the day after the general election (coincidentally; that wasn’t planned).
