Paramount Pictures has changed the release date of highly-anticipated aviation sequel Top Gun: Maverick. Originally set to debut on June 26, the Tom Cruise-led film will now hit the theaters on December 23, 2020.
The sequel’s star and producer, Tom Cruise, who plays Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, reacted to the news on Twitter.
Look, at this point, it should come as no surprise to hear that a movie is being delayed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This morning, we learned that Top Gun: Maverick is one the latest titles that’s been pushed back, so we’ll have to wait even longer for the return of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, who last graced the big screen in 1986.
Most of the season’s top movies have in the last week departed the summer. With the pandemic quickly spreading, it remains uncertain when movie theaters will reopen, or how much appetite moviegoers will have to visit cinemas when they initially reopen their doors.
Summer is typically Hollywood’s most lucrative time of year when the studios unleash a barrage of sequels, superhero films and action movies. Last year, summer ticket sales accounted for $4.3 billion in U.S. and Canadian theaters.
The delay gives Paramount more time to roll out a massive global marketing campaign. That could have been more difficult if ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ had tried to maintain its summer release date.
Cruise is gearing up to star in the seventh ‘Mission: Impossible’ movie — production in Europe was delayed when coronavirus hit Italy. This will allow him to shoot that sequel and participate in the ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ campaign.”
More importantly than business and promotional concerns surrounding the release of “Top Gun: Maverick”, the delay acknowledges that quarantine and social distancing guidelines to stop the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide will likely continue into summer.
Top Gun: Maverick is set in a world of drone technology and fifth-generation fighters along with exploring the end of the era of dogfighting. Maverick (once again played by Tom Cruise) is now a flight instructor, who takes Bradley Bradshaw (played by Miles Teller), the son of Maverick’s late partner Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, under his wing. The film also stars Jon Hamm, Val Kilmer, Jennifer Connelly, Glen Powell, and Ed Harris.
We got our first, official trailer for the movie in July 2019, and a second trailer arrived in mid-December. With Maverick currently scheduled to hit theaters in June 2020, here’s everything we know about the Top Gun sequel so far.
Tom Cruise returns as Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, somehow still active as a Navy aviator 34 years after the release of “Top Gun.”
He’s got a gig as an instructor at Miramar and aims to impart his wisdom to a new generation played by Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Jay Ellis, Lewis Pullman, Greg Tarzan Davis, Danny Ramirez and Monica Barbaro.
Joseph Kosinski (who directed Cruise in “Oblivion”) is behind the camera, and the star brought in his “Mission: Impossible” writer/director Christopher McQuarrie to work on the script.
The original Top Gun was directed by Tony Scott and also starred Kelly McGillis, Anthony Edwards, and Tom Skerritt. The film won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Take My Breath Away” performed by Berlin. In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
That we’ve now got two extra days to enjoy “Top Gun: Maverick” is welcome news in a week where noted tech “visionary” Elon Musk announced to a group of fighter pilots that their “era has passed.” Maverick is sure to disagree and will aim to prove that kind of nonsense wrong.
