Skydance studio executives confirm Top Gun sequel will star Tom Cruise as Maverick

HOLLYWOOD’S love affair with the sequel continues. A studio executive has confirmed Top Gun 2 is in the works, with Tom Cruise set to reprise his role as Maverick.

1986. Tom Cruise in a scene from film 'Top Gun'.

HOLLYWOOD’S love affair with the sequel continues. A studio executive has confirmed Top Gun Two is in the works, with Tom Cruise set to reprise his role as Maverick.

Movie website Collider reported that details about the new movie were dropped by Skydance studio executives during a press event in Berlin for the new Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Terminator: Genisys.

Skydance CEO David Ellison revealed that Street Fighter scriptwriter Justin Marks would be penning an up-to-date sequel to the 1986 high-octane blockbuster about elite US Navy fighter pilots.

Kelly McGillis as Charlie and Tom Cruise as Maverick in Top Gun ... while the original movie did much to lift Cruise into a new strata of stardom, McGillis’s career foundered in its wake. Picture: WENN.com

“(Justin) has a phenomenal take to really update that world for what fighter pilots in the Navy (have) turned in to today. 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,” Collider quoted Ellison as saying.

“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. But like all things, it all comes down to the script, and Justin is writing as we speak.”

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Ellison — who is himself a pilot — said the new movie would focus on the end of the fighter pilot era.

“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. ... 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.”

Glory days ... the shirtless volleyball scene remains one of the original movie’s most well-loved moments.

The confirmation of the Top Gun project comes as Hollywood plans a rash of sequels to movies that had previously been considered stand-alone classics.

Other 1980s movies slated for a latter-day sequel include Blade Runner (originally released in 1982), The Dark Crystal (also released in 1982) and Beetlejuice (originally released in 1988).

Top Gun was the highest-grossing movie at the US box office in 1986.