Tom Cruise and Joseph Kosinski.Photo: Hector Vivas/Getty for Paramount Pictures
Tom Cruisehad to be persuaded to makeTop Gun: Maverick, according to directorJoe Kosinski.
Cruise, 59, reprises his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the recently released sequel to 1986’sTop Gun, which marked thebiggest opening weekend box office of Cruise’s careerafter it hit theaters this past Friday.
According to Kosinski, 48, the veteran actor “really didn’t want to make anotherTop Gun” at first.
“I basically had 30 minutes to pitch this film, which I didn’t realize when we were flying over,” Kosinski said in an interview withPolygonof going to Paris to discuss the potential sequel with Cruise, who was shootingaMission: Impossiblemoviein the French capital at the time. “But when I got there, I found that Tom really didn’t want to make anotherTop Gun.”
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But luckily, “At the end of the pitch, he picked up the phone, he called the head of Paramount Pictures and said, ‘We’remaking anotherTop Gun,’ " Kosinski recalled. “It’s pretty impressive to see the power of a real movie star in that moment.”
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Tom Cruise inTop Gun: Maverick(2022). Kids, don’t try this at home.Paramount Pictures
As for what changed Cruise’s tune, Kosinski toldPolygonthat he “knew to start with character and emotion,” as he had worked with the actor in the past and knew that would appeal to him.
“With Maverick getting called back to train this group of students to go on a mission that he knows is very, very dangerous,” Kosinski said.
For the director, he felt that the conflict in the sequel “leveragedthe emotion of the past filmand those relationships that we all love, but took it in a new direction.”
RELATED VIDEO:Tom CruiseArrives at World Premiere ofTop Gun: Maverickin a Helicopter He Piloted
Kosinski went on to tellPolygonthat giving Cruise “an emotional reason to return to” his iconic character more than three decades later “was honestly the element that really grabbed Tom.”
“The second thing was, what’s Maverick been doing? You know, where do we find him?” the director added. “And this is kind of my own passion, you know, coming through and pitching the Darkstar sequence [in the beginning], just being someone who has always loved airplanes and aerospace and studied aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering and lovedThe Right Stuff.”
“So the idea of finding him as a test pilot on the bleeding edge of what’s possible seemed to me like the perfect way to find him, and Tom loved that,” Kosinski said.
Top Gun: Maverickis now playing in theaters.
source: people.com
