Top Gun 2 has been confirmed by Paramount Pictures to hit theaters on July 19, 2019, according to various sources. The movie will, of course, star Tom Cruise, reprising his role as Maverick from the first film first released back in 1986. Cruise stated that he didn’t want the sequel to have a number (i.e. Top Gun 2), so the film has been titled Top Gun: Maverick, after the famed character’s codename from the first movie. If the title doesn’t say it all, the sequel will still focus on Maverick. But, according to Deadline, Cruise’s character will now be the one teaching the youngins the ways of piloting a fighter jet. What happens after that… Well, we’ll have to wait and see.
Cruise said he’d also be doing his own stunts again. This is something he’s known for in the movie industry, especially in the Mission Impossible films.
Filming will begin next year, leaving enough room for production to finish up before the 2019 release date. The sequel will be directed by Joseph Kosinski, the filmmaker behind Tron: Legacy and Oblivion. That means the Top Gun sequel will be the second time Cruise and the director has worked together with the first being Oblivion. Although the latter film didn’t do that great with critics (nor was the movie terrible; more just eh), the duo have a working history, so that may make the process of getting work done a lot smoother. Hopefully, the work they do together proves to be worth making this Top Gun sequel 33 years later after the first.
The script will be written by Peter Craig, Justin Marks, Ashley Miller, and Zack Stentz. That’s a lot of writers to be working on one script. If I’ve learned anything about a group of people collaborating together on a piece of writing, it is that agreeing on plot threads to follow is a lot harder than it may seem. Not to mention that groupthink–the effect a group has on making poor decisions–is a real phenomenon. That doesn’t mean that the film will be poorly written, only that it’s now a more likely possibility. There isn’t any other information about the film as of now, so stay posted as time progresses.