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Believe it or not, Tom Cruise had zero plans to return to the cockpit for Top Gun: Maverick. The superstar who, now, is Maverick wasn’t feeling the need for speed the second time around. But everything flipped fast thanks to one bold pitch from director Joseph Kosinski!
Cruise went from a firm ‘no thanks’ to calling the studio mid-meeting and saying, ‘We’re making another Top Gun.’ In a chat with Collider, Kosinski spilled how the sequel took flight. It turns out that Cruise wasn’t just hesitant; he was ready to shut the whole thing down.
“I think he walked into that room prepared to say, ‘Thank you for coming all this way, and I appreciate it, but I’m not interested in making another movie,’” Kosinski said. Thankfully, that wasn’t the end of the story.
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Inside The Mission (Impossible) Of Convincing Tom Cruise
Let’s rewind to Paris, 2018. Cruise was busy hanging off helicopters for Mission: Impossible – Fallout when Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer showed up with a pitch in their back pocket. Kosinski didn’t even know Cruise wasn’t keen on the sequel.
However, Kosinski came prepared. “I had kind of my four big ideas that I wanted to talk through,” he said. “I had some visuals. I had some videos. I had a poster, I had a title.” But it wasn’t the flash that got Cruise, it was the heart.
The clincher was Maverick’s emotional arc with Rooster, played by Miles Teller. Rooster is the grown-up son of Goose, Maverick’s wingman from the original film, who tragically died. That connection struck a chord.
“That was the thing I think that really got him hooked,” Kosinski explained. “There was finally something that he could latch onto emotionally, which was this reconciliation with Goose’s son.” The story was personal to the actor. Cruise remembered that piano scene from Top Gun, where a little kid in a cowboy hat sat beside his dad, Goose. That image stuck with him.
“Just like looking at that little kid… and thinking about him growing up, and what that would mean if he became a Naval aviator and Maverick had to send him into combat,” Kosinski said. “I think that’s where Tom finally said, ‘You know what? That’s it. That’s what’s worth coming back for.”
And just like that, Maverick was airborne again. It’s crazy to think Top Gun: Maverick (a global box office smash and fan favorite) almost never existed. But all it took was one powerful meeting and a story that hit the right emotional notes.
In Kosinski’s words, “That was a pretty epic meeting, and pretty amazing to see that level of power on display.” When Tom Cruise picked up the phone and greenlit the movie himself, Hollywood got a reminder: never count out Maverick. Especially when the story’s got heart, history, and just enough danger to make it fly.
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