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We've got some very bad news for 'Top Gun' fans

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We've got some very bad news for 'Top Gun' fans
30 August 2018

Young Tom Cruise may be putting his thumb up in that picture up there, but it’s not all good news for the upcoming sequel to his most famous movie, Top Gun

The movie, subtitled Maverick, was originally set to come out in July 2019, is now set to be released on June 26, 2020 - a whole year later. That’s a long time to wait when all you want to see is some damn planes doing the zoomy-shooty in the cloudy-woudies.

The reason for this? It appears that more time was required to allow the filmmakers to work out the logistics of filming the fancy flight sequences using new technology and planes - it’s been a long time since the original, a lengthy 31 years, in fact. Producer David Ellison told Collider in 2015:

“It is very much a world we live in today where it’s drone technology, and fifth-generation fighters are really what the United States Navy is calling the last man-made fighter that we’re actually going to produce, so it’s really [about] exploring the ‘end of an era’ of dogfighting and fighter pilots and what that culture is today. 

“The plot will take place in the present day to account for the decades between the sequel and 1986.”

It was only a week before that there was an announcement announcement that two new cast-members had been added to the roster - John Hamm and Ed Harris, both in as-yet-unspecified roles. They’re joining Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer who are both reprising their roles as Maverick and Ice Man, respectively, as well as a bunch of new recruits, including Miles Teller (as Goose’s son) and Monica Barbaro as the soon-to-be-franchise’s first female pilot. Also featuring is Lewis Pullman, the son of actor Bill Pullman, who recently starred in The Strangers: Prey at Night.

The film, Top Gun: Maverick, has already started filming according to a Twitter post from Cruise, but how they proceed now is a mystery - if it’s really taking this long to film then it had better deliver on some pretty spectacular stuff. 

(Image: Paramount)