Fire up the Tomcats! Or probably the drones… With Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer still stoking the fires of the sequel, Val Kilmer is now saying that Iceman may well return for Top Gun 2.
In development since before the tragic death of Tony Scott in 2012, the follow-up to 1986’s cult classic fighter pilot drama is inching closer to production take off, with Cruise aiming to return as Maverick, this time shepherding a fresh class of airborne wannabe hot shots into conflicts. And, if it all comes together, his old rival-turned-pal Iceman is also going to be part of the story. “I just got offered #topgun2 – not often you get to say ‘yes’ without reading the script,” Kilmer writes on Facebook. “Jerry Bruckheimer and Tom Cruise!!! ‘Yes.’ We will all miss Tony Scott one of the kindest gentlemen I've ever met in the film biz, but let's fire up some fighter jets again!!!” Despite his earlier statement pointing to him taking on the role again, Kilmer has added that he "jumped the gun" and that nothing is confirmed yet.
Whether fighter jets will be a big part of the movie remains to be seen, as today’s warfare tends to be more about unnamed vehicles than pilots flipping off their Russian opposite numbers. Producer David Ellison had this to say to USA Today back in June. "Justin Marks is writing the screenplay right now. He has a phenomenal take to really update that world for what fighter pilots in the Navy has turned into today." When you look at the world of dogfighting, what's interesting about it is that it's not a world that exists to the same degree when the original movie came out. This world has not been explored. 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 exploring the end of an era of dogfighting and fighter pilots and what that culture is today."
Quite what the actual film will be is still a mystery, as it doesn’t have much in the way of a director (at least officially yet) nor has the deck chief given the thumbs up for the film. Still, if they can Iceman and Maverick, together again? Great news. All we need now is Goose. Oh…
Zombie Goose?