Despite plenty of enthusiasm from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Tom Cruise, the long-gestating Top Gun 2 has lingered in development, and lost much of the little momentum it had when director Tony Scott died in 2012. But Paramount is committed to getting this one off the ground again, and is negotiating to put Justin Marks in the script cockpit.
Marks, who has wrote 2009’s Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun Li, has several scripts floating around in various stages at different studios, including one called War Dogs that Bruckheimer was developing under his Disney deal. Since moving to Paramount, the producer has been spearheading forward movement on several of his old franchises. And Disney has given Marks' career a boost recently, since he’s the writer who got Jon Favreau’s version of The Jungle Book ready to shoot.
Details on the sequel are still largely classified, but Cruise is apparently still in line to return as rule-breaking flyer Maverick, now likely teaching at the academy and aiming to prove that human pilots are still relevant in a drone-happy world.
There is no director currently attached, and the project has been though several writers including X-Men: First Class duo Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz and The Town’s Peter Craig, but we could see this one way soon. Consider this, then, the sliproad to the highway to the danger zone.