Val Kilmer ready to ‘fire up some fighter jets’ for Top Gun sequel, but he’s not in yet

Here’s Kilmer’s official post below:

Nearly a a year since it was announced that screenwriter Justin Marks (Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li) was working on a sequel to Top Gun, a presser for Terminator Genisys delivered the first official update on the project courtesy of the film’s producers.

During the press junket, Skydance Productions CEO David Ellison and CCO Dana Goldberg were asked about the status of the Top Gun sequel during a group interview, and offered some hints about what to expect when Tom Cruise’s hotshot fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell returns to the big screen.

“Justin Marks is writing the screenplay right now,” said Ellison (as reported by Collider). “He has a phenomenal take to really update that world for what fighter pilots in the Navy has turned into today. … When you look at the world of dogfighting, what’s interesting about it is that it’s not a world that exists to the same degree when the original movie came out. … 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.”

Ellison also confirmed that Cruise will be returning for more than a cameo role in the film, stating that “there is no Top Gun without Maverick, and it is going to be Maverick playing Maverick.”

While neither Ellison nor Goldberg could confirm that the film will be shot in 3D and/or IMAX, both producers agreed that it would make sense for a project like this one. The producers also agreed that Cruise was likely to push for as much use of practical effects as possible.

“As everyone knows with Tom, he is 100-percent going to want to be in those airplanes shooting it practically,” said Ellison. Cruise is famous for doing his own stunts, including a high-flying turn of a different kind in the latest Mission: Impossible sequel, in which Cruise is strapped to the outside of a jet as it takes off. We can only imagine he’ll want to show something similarly daring in his return to the franchise that solidified his super-stardom.

“I don’t think [it will be] what people are going to expect, and we are very, very hopeful that we get to make the movie very soon,” he added. “But like all things, it all comes down to the script, and Justin is writing as we speak.”

There’s currently no start of production scheduled for the Top Gun sequel, and no release date at this point.