Get ready to feel the need for speed in summer 2019. Paramount Studios has given Tom Cruise‘s Top Gun sequel an official release date of July 12, 2019.
Although Paramount listed the title simply as “Top Gun,” on Friday, June 30, Cruise has previously said that the long-awaited sequel will be titled Top Gun: Maverick. “It’s not going to be called ‘Top Gun 2,’” the actor, 54, told Access Hollywood in June. “I didn’t want a number. You don’t need a number.”
Cruise went on to explain that the sequel will feel similar to fans of the 1986 classic, which also starred Kelly McGillis, Anthony Edwards, Meg Ryan and Val Kilmer.“We’re going to have the same tone that we had from the first,” he said. “Stylistically, it’s going to be the same.”
Cruise will be reprising his role as aviator Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the modern world of drone technology. “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. This world has not been explored,” Skydance CEO David Ellison told Collider of the film in 2015. “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.”
Though he’s stayed mum on specifics about the film, the star offered up more details about the project to Entertainment Tonight in June. “There’s gonna be jets, very fast jets. There’s gonna be an aircraft carrier, maybe two. And a wide range of jets,” he joked. “[There] may be a volleyball scene.”
