Top Gun: Maverick is feeling the need… the need for a leisurely stroll down the French seaside. The film will be screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival ahead of its theatrical release on May 27. This year, the fest runs from May 17-28, and the long-awaited sequel, featuring a returning Tom Cruise in the lead role, will be screened in an out-of-competition slot at the prestigious event.
Variety confirmed that Cannes director Thierry Fremaux had been courting the film since pre-pandemic times. A long-in-development sequel to director Tony Scott’s 1986 blockbuster original, which charted the adventures of an upstart pilot and his rogue squadron, Maverick is directed by Joseph Kosinski, who previously worked with Cruise on the 2013 science-fiction film Oblivion. This is the first time in three decades that a Cruise film will play at Cannes — he last walked the Croisette in 1992, with Ron Howard’s Far and Away.
Maverick has experienced numerous delays. It was originally supposed to be released in the summer of 2019, before being pushed to June 2020. It was then pushed to December 2020, before being moved to July, and then November 2021. It finally settled on its May 2022 release late last year. During this time, streamers such as Netflix and Apple TV+ reportedly sought to buy it from Paramount, which had previously offloaded high-profile titles such as The Tomorrow War and The Lovebirds to streaming. Crucially, the studio’s decision to hold on to films such as A Quiet Place: Part II, Scream and Jackass Forever has paid off, literally.
Also starring are Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, Monica Barbaro, and Ed Harris. Top Gun: Maverick will reportedly have a world premiere in San Diego, prior to its Cannes screening.
Top Gun: Maverick premieres in theaters on May 27. Check out the film’s official synopsis down below:
After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose.” Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.