You’re gonna have to wait a bit longer to kick the tires and light the fires. Paramount Pictures has pushed the Top Gun 2 release date back by a full year, opting to release the sequel on June 26, 2020 instead of its originally planned July 12, 2019 bow. Pre-shoots took place this past May, before Tom Cruise went off to conduct Mission: Impossible – Fallout press duties. Principal photography is now about to get underway as casting has heated up, but hitting that July 2019 release date would have been a bit difficult given the technical nature of the shoot.
Per Deadline, the move is being made to allow the production time to create “incredible” flight sequences so the film can be great. Cruise reteams with his Oblivion director Joseph Kosinski on the film, which has been in development for years. Originally, Top Gun director Tony Scott was going to reprise his director duties. When Scott died, the future of the project was unclear for a bit, but clearly Cruise and producer Jerry Bruckheimer were passionate about getting Top Gun 2 made.
We still don’t know too much about the story of the sequel, other than the fact that Cruise’s Maverick is now an instructor at a flight academy. Miles Teller won the hotly contested role of Goose’s son, but runner-up Glen Powell so impressed Cruise and producers that they found a different role for the Set It Up actor to play in the film. Val Kilmer is due to reprise his duties as Iceman, while Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, Thomasin McKenzie, and a slew of young performers round out the ensemble.
The release date shift leaves a hole in the middle of next July, but it’s shaping up to be one of the most packed months of the year. It kicks off with Spider-Man: Far from Home on July 5th, then Disney launches the sure-to-be-mega-hit The Lion King on July 19th, and Quentin Tarantino drops Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on July 26th. Whatever decides to fill the July 15th hole better have the goods.
On its new date, Top Gun: Maverick is scheduled to go head to head with the musical adaptation In the Heights and will open a week after an untitled Pixar film.
