Caffeinated Clint
Thanks to financier David Ellison’s fat wallet, a “Top Gun” sequel looks like it’s going to take off. Better still, with Tony Scott back in the director’s chair and Tom Cruise reprising Lt. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell. Last we heard Christopher McQuarrie had briefly flirted with writing the script for the film, but he’s now swamped with his directing duties on another Cruise flick “One-Shot”, so there’s nothing to say about a script, let alone a scripter, yet.
Cruise, stopping to talk to waterless microphones at the “Mission : Impossible – Ghost Protocol” premiere, tells Access Hollywood that the follow-up to the 1986 film is something they’re definitely looking at doing.
You know, Tony and I and Jerry [Bruckheimer], we never thought about it. We never thought we could. But I love working with those guys and we’ve just been exploring stories. Got to get back in those airplanes on ‘Top Gun.’ That could be fun. If we could figure that out, that’ll be fun.
Cruise also collaborated with Scott on the 1990 car-racing drama “Days of Thunder”.
The site also asked Cruise whether there’s a chance he might reprise lovestruck sports agent Jerry Maguire in the future.
Cruise said that’d be up to director Cameron Crowe, a man who recently said there’s only one film in his cast of credits that he’d ever consider sequelizing – “Say Anything” (1989); and even if isn’t something he’s seriously looking at doing.
We’ve got to talk to [director] Cameron [Crowe] about that
That’ll never happen, so no need to open up Photoshop and cook up some fanart posters for “Jerry Maguire 2”, kids.
There’s so many things I remember about my first viewing of “Top Gun” but mostly, I remember being late to the theatre.
For some reason, we were dreadfully late to the session. The film had to have been about 20 minutes in by the time we rocked up. We shuffled into the dark theatre – which, mind you, was packed – searched for seats, before trying to catch up on what the heck was happening.
I know I should remember my first viewing of Tony Scott’s mega-hit more fondly – but sadly, the ‘death of Goose’ or the ‘Serenading McGillis at the bar’ scene just pales in comparison to my memory of missing the first act of the film.
Yeah, I ended up seeing the film again – probably less than two-weeks later – but it’s just a pity that my first viewing of “Top Gun” was by way of a truncated version. I’ve fonder memories of watching “Gremlins”, “Ghostbusters”, “The Last Starfighter”, “The Goonies”, “Back to the Future” and “Terminator 2″ at the cinema – wasn’t late for those; in fact, was probably half-an-hour early – it’s just a pity I didn’t have a more cherished memory of my first time with Pete Maverick.
But I digress. After “Top Gun” hit big – and it was huge! It had kids lining up to be Flyboys, for Christ’s sake! – and Tom Cruise suddenly became more than “the kid from Risky Business” (which is actually funny, because I remember they were originally courting Matthew Modine to play Maverick. Cruise’s name was likely way down on the list!), Paramount were dead keen to re-enter the Danger Zone. But a sequel would never eventuate – largely because of Cruise’s escalating fee and understandable determination to play other roles.
So how did this go from ‘laughable suggestion’ to ‘bonafide project’ so quickly? Two words : David. Ellison. The filthy-rich actor cum producer, who in addition to producing Tom Cruise’s “Mission : Impossible Ghost Protocol″, worked with my business partner Christopher Showerman on the new Universal comedy “Hole in One”, has a thing for aerobatics; you’ll recall Ellison starred in and produced the “Flyboys” movie a couple of years ago. Guess he wants another shot at making a movie about ‘birds’ and believes “Top Gun 2″ has a much better chance of making a dollar than a dull old WWII pilot movie starring Martin Henderson ever did. Probably right, too!
Director Tony Scott says this won’t just be a rehash of the original film either. Last year, HitFix caught up with the director – on the promo trail for “Unstoppable” – who said he’d already begun researching for ideas.
“I’m not waiting for a script. I’m going to do my homework. I’m going down to I think it’s Fallon, Nevada, down near New Mexico and it’s a whole different world now,” Scott says. “These computer geeks — these kids play war games in a trailer in Fallon, Nevada and if we ever went to war or were in the Middle East or the Far East or wherever it is, these guys can actually fly drones. They are unmanned aircraft. They operate them and then they party all night.”
“I don’t want to do a remake. I don’t want to do a reinvention. I want to do a new movie.”
Good, cos I can’t see Kelly McGillis passing for 30, anymore. (Having said that, I do think it a little wrong that McGillis won’t appear in the movie – and you know she won’t; just like Bonnie Bedelia was written out of the “Die Hard” movie series because studios chiefs didn’t think audiences would believe Bruce Willis’s John McClane would actually still be with… a woman his own age… it’s just disrespectful.)
