Development was attached as director in 2017. In 1990, during the promotion of
Born on the Fourth of July (1989),
Tom Cruise dismissed the notion of a sequel to
Top Gun (1986) as "irresponsible".
Paramount Pictures began development on the film in 2010 after making offers to the first film's producer
Jerry Bruckheimer and director
Tony Scott to create a sequel to
Top Gun with Cruise reprising his role. When asked about his idea for a new
Top Gun film, Scott replied, "This world fascinated me, because it's so different from what it was originally. But I don't want to do a remake. I don't want to do a reinvention. I want to do a new movie." It was reported that the film would focus on the end of the dogfighting era, the role of drones in modern aerial warfare, and would see Cruise's character, Maverick, fly an
F/A-18E Super Hornet. Following Scott's death in 2012, the sequel's future became uncertain, but Bruckheimer remained committed to the project, especially given interest expressed by Cruise and
Val Kilmer. Cruise revealed in June 2017 that the sequel would be titled
Top Gun: Maverick, noting that he did not want a number in the title. He added that the film is "going to be a competition film, similar to the first one", but clarified it as "a progression for Maverick". By July 2017,
Joseph Kosinski was announced as the director, after previously collaborating with Cruise on his film
Oblivion (2013). Kosinski met with Cruise on the set of
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018), providing a
lookbook, a poster, and a title,
Top Gun: Maverick, prior to his hiring. Cruise then contacted
Jim Gianopulos and requested to make the film. In June 2019, at
CineEurope in
Barcelona, attendees were given a first look at some early footage of the film from a special Paramount presentation which ended with the Paramount President of International Theatrical Distribution Mark Viane and co-president of Worldwide Marketing and Distribution Mary Daily appearing in full flight gear. In 2019, Chinese company
Tencent invested 12.5% of the film but later pulled out of the project at the end of that year over concerns that the film's themes could anger the Chinese government.
Writing By mid-2010,
Christopher McQuarrie received an offer to write the sequel's screenplay, which was rumored to have Cruise's character Maverick in a smaller role. The following year,
Ashley Edward Miller and
Zack Stentz were credited as screenwriters on the project. The studio would later move onto
Peter Craig to draft a new script under Scott's direction in March 2012. However, the project unexpectedly stalled due to Scott's suicide in August of that year. Scott had apparently finalized the script and begun scouting locations with him and Cruise touring
Naval Air Station Fallon,
Nevada, a week before his death.
The Hollywood Reporter said the
Top Gun sequel was one of three directing projects in "advanced development". In March 2014, Bruckheimer said the filmmakers were taking a new approach, which involved pilots being rendered obsolete by
drones. In September 2014, the sequel was officially revived.
Justin Marks entered negotiations to write the screenplay. Marks said that the sequel to
Top Gun was his "dream project" and that the original was "an iconic film in his memory" that inspired him to write screenplays. He researched the F-35
Joint Strike Fighter to gain insight into "how Top Gun would be represented in the current period". The first focused on the severed relationship between Maverick and Goose's son, set against a dangerous combat mission. The second focused on Maverick's current place in the Navy as part of the "Darkstar" program and the secrecy surrounding it. In October 2018, McQuarrie, a frequent collaborator of Cruise, was brought in for rewrites during production. McQuarrie opted to mostly ignore the first film during the writing process in order to make a film that could stand on its own merits without trying to outdo the original. He also flew with the
Blue Angels in preparation. By January 2020, final screenplay credits were given to
Ehren Kruger, Singer, and McQuarrie, while story credit was attributed to Craig and Marks.
Casting played Cruise's love interest. Cruise's involvement in
Top Gun: Maverick was announced in January 2016. He was paid between $12 and $14 million plus a
portion of the film's box office gross, which totaled more than $100 million.
Val Kilmer, now cancer-free, had campaigned on his
Facebook page to reprise his role from the first film. In June 2018,
TheWrap reported that he would appear in the film. Bruckheimer and the filmmakers wanted to bring Kilmer back, especially with Cruise's insistence. A trailer released in March 2022 featured a photograph of Kilmer wearing a uniform of a four-star admiral. In July 2018,
Miles Teller was cast in the role of Goose's son, against
Nicholas Hoult and
Glen Powell. Later that month,
Jennifer Connelly joined the film's cast to play a single mother running a bar near the naval base. In August 2018, Powell joined the cast in a pilot trainee role that was enlarged for him, having impressed Cruise, Bruckheimer, and executives at Paramount and
Skydance Media, with his auditions. He was cast as the arrogant "Hangman" (originally named "Slayer" when he read the script). Powell was initially unimpressed by the prospect of taking the role, feeling the character was a unidimensional "dick garnish" and a "Navy
Draco Malfoy" with no payoff nor reason to exist other than adding conflict to "Roosters
character arc. Cruise, Bruckheimer, Kosinski, and McQuarrie managed to convince him that he could shape his performance to make "Hangman" a more well-rounded character. Cruise advised Powell on body language in different cultures, helping him to play "Hangman" so that global audiences would emotionally connect with the character. In the same month,
Monica Barbaro,
Thomasin McKenzie,
Charles Parnell,
Jay Ellis,
Bashir Salahuddin,
Danny Ramirez,
Ed Harris,
Jon Hamm, and
Lewis Pullman joined the cast of the film; Barbaro, Pullman, Ellis, and Ramirez portrayed aviator trainees, while McKenzie was to portray the daughter of Connelly's character. Hamm signed onto the film before he was given an official offer or script. In September 2018,
Manny Jacinto joined the cast. In October 2018, Kara Wang, Jack Schumacher,
Greg Tarzan Davis,
Jake Picking,
Raymond Lee,
Jean Louisa Kelly, and
Lyliana Wray joined the cast; Wray replaced McKenzie, who dropped out of the film after signing onto
Lost Girls (2020). In November 2018,
Chelsea Harris joined the cast.
Kelly McGillis,
Meg Ryan, and
Aaron and Adam Weis, all of whom appeared in the original film, were not asked to appear in the sequel.
Top Gun cast members
Rick Rossovich and
Tom Skerritt, who played Slider and Viper respectively, were asked to return and filmed material for Iceman's funeral scene, but it was ultimately cut. According to interviews with
Vanity Fair and
GQ,
Lewis Hamilton was offered a fighter pilot role because of his friendship with Cruise but turned down the offer because of his
Formula One commitments.
Filming To create the illusion that the actors were piloting the jets during flying scenes, the producers paid the Navy $11,374 per flight hour for F/A-18E (single seat) and F/A-18F (dual seat) Super Hornets and pilots to fly them. For external shots, real Navy pilots flew the E version. For shots of the actors in flight, the F version was used with the actual pilot in the front seat. One F/A-18F was rigged with special cameras to film an actor in the back seat. Cruise designed a three-month "boot camp" to train the actors with flying roles to get them used to aerobatics and high
g-forces, as well as build the spatial awareness they would need to operate the camera equipment. Some of the training was required by the Navy for passengers in tactical jets, including underwater evacuation. Barbaro said the cast endured aerobatics riding in the
Extra 300L flown by
Chuck Coleman, including right before flights in the F/A-18F, to ensure their bodies had the required tolerance. She also praised the female pilots she had worked with during the filming process, and commented that while the "military aviation community [is] progressive, there's no way that [sexism] doesn't still exist in little moments here and there. It's par for the course for women in historically male-dominated spaces. So I was glad we kept that in." The actors also had to learn lighting, cinematography, and editing to properly run the cameras, because, according to Bruckheimer "when they're up in the jet, they have to direct themselves, essentially." Preliminary production on the film officially started on May 30, 2018, in
San Diego. Although the real-life Top Gun school had been moved to
Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada since the events of the first film, the story was set in San Diego at
Naval Air Station North Island. The crew did film aerial shots at Naval Air Station Fallon. In mid-February 2019, Cruise and the production crew were sighted on board at NAS North Island. In March, filming in the
Cascade Mountains was completed out of
Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in
Oak Harbor, Washington, where routes were scouted by helicopter and the L-39 before filming the F/A-18s. In June 2019, Miles Teller revealed in an interview that he had finished filming two days earlier. Principal photography was scheduled until April 15, 2019, in San Diego,
Lemoore,
China Lake,
Chico, and
Lake Tahoe in California;
Seattle; and
Patuxent River, Maryland. The low-pass scene with Ed Harris was filmed at China Lake with flying a Blue Angels plane at less than around , which on the 20th and last pass pulled roofing material from the guard shack flying off held only by
romex cable. The film was shot in
IMAX format using IMAX-certified Sony Venice 6K
full-frame cameras. Kosinski said that the team spent more than a year with
Navy forces to use the IMAX cameras inside the cockpit. Four were directed towards the actor and two were faced outwards, accompanied by numerous cameras mounted on the aircraft's exterior. He said "the audience should feel the authenticity, strain, speed and gravitational forces, something that cannot be achieved through soundstage or visual effects, which needed a tremendous amount of effort and work."
NAVAIR engineers used
wind tunnel testing and
computer modeling to rig cameras to the aircraft to withstand the speeds and g-forces sustained during maneuvering and carrier landings while maintaining safety in the event of ejection. More than 800 hours of aerial footage was shot for the film, The set of the Hard Deck bar, inspired by the real-life "I-Bar", was constructed on the beach at Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado, California with permission from the Navy. Kosinski said, "The reason we approached Skunk Works is because I wanted to make the most realistic hypersonic aircraft we possibly could. In fact, as you saw, we built it full-scale in cooperation with them. But the reason it looks so real is because it was the engineers from Skunk Works who helped us design it. So those are the same people who are working on real aircraft who helped us design Darkstar for this film." Lockheed denied that Darkstar is related to the uncrewed
Lockheed Martin SR-72, whose existence the company has never confirmed.
F-14 Production designer Jeremy Hindle said that using a
F-14 Tomcat (which is featured in the first film) would have been difficult. "There are no F-14s that fly because they [have been decommissioned in the U.S.] and all the engines have been taken out of them." He said that they were not able to use the active F-14 Tomcats in
Iran, the only other country that acquired the aircraft, due to
sanctions. With help from the Navy, the production team secured one F-14A from the
San Diego Air & Space Museum in
California. Hindle described further challenges, including dismantling and shipping the plane's components, and making the aircraft as functional as possible, though still without engines. while the F/A-18 dogfighting and final strike scenes were shot with a single jet, producing footage that was used to create multiple jets onscreen.
Skywalker Sound worked on sound design and temp mixing for the film. They created aviation sound effects, working closely with
GE Aviation, a jet engine manufacturer out of
Cincinnati. Final sound editing and mixing in
Dolby Atmos and IMAX was handled by London-based Soundbyte Studios and
Twickenham Film Studios. Recording mixers Chris Burdon and Mark Taylor worked in two theaters with different audio configurations to complete the mixes, which took place in June and July 2020. After his treatment and operation for throat cancer, Val Kilmer lost his ability to speak effectively. In 2021, he worked with Sonantic, a UK-based software company that specializes in
voice synthesis, to digitally recreate his voice using
AI technology and archived audio recordings of his voice. For
Top Gun: Maverick, however, this technology was not used. Director
Joseph Kosinski said in an interview that they used Kilmer's actual voice, digitally altering it to increase clarity. Footage from the original film was used in a scene where Maverick watches Rooster playing "
Great Balls of Fire" on the piano, invoking memories of Goose's family and death. The footage was used as a flashback, to help explain the characters' relationship and to deepen the emotional conflicts involved. This was not planned in the original script; Kosinski introduced the idea in the film editing phase. In July 2024, actor
Manny Jacinto, in regards to having his lines cut from the finished film, said that "Tom Cruise is writing stories for Tom Cruise" and that "There was this sense of where the film was going [on set], like I can see them focusing the camera more on these [other] guys and not taking so much time on our scenes." ==Music==