Guaranteed adrenaline rush – Top Gun: Maverick is FINALLY coming to theaters May 27th!
Category: Top Gun: Maverick
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER – The world’s most high-profile fest comes amid the film’s planned release around the globe at the end of May.
Top Gun: Maverick is taking a flight to the Cannes Film Festival.Paramount and Skydance high-profile sequel — starring Tom Cruise, one of the world’s biggest stars — will screen at the festival in advance of its Memorial Day premiere in theaters, according to sources close to the festival.
Top Gun 2 will open in North America on May 27, after beginning its international rollout earlier that week. Paramount declined to comment on any plans to show up on the Croisette, but buzz has been growing about the movie playing at Cannes.
This year, the iconic festival on the French Riviera runs May 17-28.
Cannes has long been a platform to launch a big Memorial Day tentoples (most play out of competition.) The fest gets Hollywood studios access to press from around the world, not to mention the benefit of high-profile stars walking the famous red carpet for photos.
This would mark the first time in 30 years a Cruise film has screened at Cannes, with the Ron Howard-directed Far and Away bowing at the fest in 1992. Cruise is considered one of Hollywood’s most relentless promoters, and never shies away from publicity. Cannes would be an obvious place for the actor to show off his new film. And Cruise’s appearance would be of benefit to the festival as it emerges from the pandemic.
Cannes, however, would not likely mark Top Gun: Maverick‘s world premiere. That event has long been planned to be held in San Diego, where the first film was set.
Cruise’s Oblivion director Joseph Kosinski directs Maverick, which also stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, Monica Barbaro, Ed Harris and Val Kilmer, returning as Iceman. The original Top Gun, directed by the late Tony Scott and released in 1986, helped turn Cruise into a household name around the world.
The Top Gun sequel has faced a long road to the screen and was delayed multiple times due to covid pressures on theatrical business. Maverick launched its first trailer at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019, with Cruise surprising the crowd in person. More recently, the first 13 minutes of Maverick screened at CinemaCon in August 2021.
I have added a production still, along with screen captures from This Is Not A War Story into the gallery. I have also added screen captures from this past week’s episode of MTV’s “The Challenge”, where Danny and his Top Gun: Maverick co-stars Monica Barbaro and Glen Powell appeared.
Don’t forget to watch This Is Not A War Story on HBO Max!
VANITY FAIR – Three years ago Tom Cruise set out to cast a new generation of magnetic, and chiseled, pilots for Top Gun: Maverick, the highly anticipated sequel scheduled to land on Memorial Day weekend next year. After scouring young Hollywood, he found his squad: Glen Powell, Jay Ellis, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, Monica Barbaro (playing the first female pilot featured in the franchise), and Miles Teller.
Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski wanted real stunts with cameras capturing actual flight patterns, so the star curated the training he wished he’d had back in 1986. “In anyone else’s hands, Top Gun is a CGI movie,” says Powell. “Only Tom puts real actors in real planes.” The aircraft were flown by pilots, but the cast were in the cockpit for such long, intense stretches that sometimes they had to do what they had to do: “I peed in the plane a few times,” says Ellis. “I peed in the plane almost every time,” says Pullman. The actors trained for three months in a progression of aircraft, then did maintenance flights for g-force tolerance. “Tom would go first,” says Ellis. “And then we’d have to go up there and try to keep up with what he just did.”
Fans of the original Top Gun’s immortal beach volleyball scene will be relieved to hear that our new heroes find time to play shirtless football on the sand. The younger actors worked out and skipped carbs for months to prep—and did some last-second moisturizing so their muscles would glisten. “I was eventually cut off from the baby oil,” says Powell. After sunset, the cast celebrated with wings, tater tots, and beer, but later learned they had to shoot the scene again. “We were devastated,” Ellis says with a laugh.
Moviegoers everywhere will thank them for their service.
