Top Gun 2 still aiming for take-off, says producer

A publicity image from Top Gun. Photo/Supplied

Tom Cruise is still feeling the need for speed.

Plans for a sequel to action classic Top Gun are still on the boil, according to Jerry Bruckheimer.

The movie producer offered a swift update on the long-gestating follow-up movie while speaking at the Produced By Conference in Los Angeles over the weekend.

"For 30 years we've been trying to make a sequel and we're not going to stop. We still want to do it with Tom [Cruise] and Paramount are still interested in making it," Deadline quotes Bruckheimer as saying.

"What Tom tells me is that no matter where he goes in the world, people refer to him as Maverick," he added.

"It's something he is excited about so as long as he keeps his enthusiasm hopefully we'll get it made."

According to the website, Bruckheimer also noted that the tragic death of Top Gun director Tony Scott in August had (as was widely reported last year) "put a pause" on Paramount's plans for a sequel to the 1986 blockbuster.

Talk of a Top Gun 2 surfaced in late 2010, when the New York Times reported that Paramount had approached both Bruckheimer and Scott with an offer to bring a follow-up to the big screen.

Bruckheimer also confirmed to MTV News that he'd been approached by the studio.

"We tried to develop [a sequel] and we couldn't do it - I was with my partner Don Simpson," Bruckheimer explained to MTV News at the time. "And then Tom took it over and he tried to develop something and it never quite happened."

He continued, "We were recently approached again to start talking about it but, you know, nothing yet. We kicked around some ideas because the aviation community has completely changed since we made the movie a long time ago. So we have to find a way in and how to incorporate the Maverick character into it."

Fast forward to December 2011, and Cruise offered an official update on the project.

"We're working on it," he chimed.

Cruise said he wanted to be a part of it - providing they "find a story that [they] all want to do".

"I hope we can figure this out to do it again," he said.

He continued: "I said to Tony, I want to make another movie with him. He and I haven't made a film since Days of Thunder.

"Tony and I and Jerry, we never thought that we would do it again. Then they started to come to us with these ideas and I thought, wow, that would be what we could do now.

"We all want to make a film that is in the same kind of tone as the other one and shoot it in the same way as we shot Top Gun."

Asked what his potential role would be in the sequel, he replied: "I don't know - we're working on it."

Cruise recently confirmed that he will return to the role of Ethan Hunt in the upcoming Mission: Impossible 5.

Stay tuned for more on Top Gun 2 as I hear it.

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