Top Gun: Maverick: Everything we know about the movie so far
Get ready to feel the need for speed all over again. After years of rumors, Top Gun: Maverick is officially flying into theaters more than three decades since the 1986 film premiered. Original star Tom Cruise is returning for the sequel, and he won’t be the only familiar face in the film.
We got our first, official trailer for the movie in July 2019, and a second trailer arrived in mid-December. With Maverick currently scheduled to hit theaters in June 2020, here’s everything we know about the Top Gun sequel so far.
Originally scheduled to hit theaters in July 2019, Top Gun: Maverick had its premiere pushed back almost a year by Paramount Pictures. The studio eventually announced a June 26, 2020, release date for the film, only to push it up to June 24 in early March.
The June 24 release date follows Paramount’s trend of releasing some of its biggest films on a Wednesday, which was the case for many of the Transformers movies and the studio’s other big movies.
Super Bowl spot
Paramount released a new, pulse-pounding TV spot during Super Bowl LIV. The high-octane, stressful trailer teases Maverick’s fate as a voice-over explains that he is potentially facing court-martial and a dishonorable discharge. This is interspersed with Maverick’s heavy breathing as he pilots a fighter jet at death-defying speeds.
New photos
In conjunction with a new interview with Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, Entertainment Weekly has obtained new images from the upcoming sequel to the 1986 action hit.
In the images, we see some of the new hot-shot pilots that Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell will help maximize their skills. Unlike in the first movie, these pilots are already graduates of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (a.k.a. Top Gun). According to Kosinski, “In our film, these are all Top Gun graduates who are coming back for a special training detachment — which is another aspect of Top Gun where they can go back for specialized training after they’ve already graduated. They’re at a different level of experience than in the first film.”
Check out the new images on EW’s Twitter:
Actors pushed to the limit
A behind-the-scenes featurette shows how director Joseph Kosinski staged some of the fighter pilot footage and how physically grueling the work was for the actors. Tom Cruise and other Top Gun: Maverick cast members look to be deeply uncomfortable or even ready to vomit in the footage.
Wonder Woman 1984: Photos, release date, plot details, cast and more
Forget the invisible-jet-flying Wonder Woman from the delightfully cheesy SuperFriends cartoon. Fans met an entirely new heroine in the 2017 blockbuster feature simply called Wonder Woman.
We've been waiting for the sequel almost since walking out of the theater and will collect news and views about it here. The basics: It's called Wonder Woman 1984, and filming finished up last December. (Read: Wonder Woman 1984 en español.)
The latest
The first trailer was released in early December 2019 at the CCXP comic expo in Brazil.
It hints at a friendship between Gal Gadot's Diana Prince and Kristen Wiig's Barbara Minerva, an archaeologist who channels an ancient goddess known as Cheetah. (Cheetah's a known WW villain, so this friendship is doomed.)
Spoiler alert: The trailer also reveals that yes, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) is back. He sacrificed himself in the first film, so we're not sure how this works out, but it's a good decision plot-wise, even if it doesn't make sense continuity-wise.
The basics
Wonder Woman was the third-highest-grossing movie of 2017, behind only Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast. Fans worried at first about whether Jenkins would return for the sequel, but she signed on in September 2017. Variety reported that Jenkins would earn around $8 million to direct, produce and work on the script, which would make her the highest-paid female director of all time.
The sequel's title is Wonder Woman 1984, so obviously, it's set in the neon-splashed Reagan Era. Two photos released in 2018 show Diana marveling at some very 1980s TV screens (J.R. Ewing!) and Steve Trevor getting his shopping mall on.
At Comic-Con 2018, attendees were treated to some new footage.
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You can't stop Wonder Woman. She's coming back for a sequel.
Warner Bros.
Release date, production info
Wonder Woman 1984 is now scheduled for a June 5, 2020, release, moved back from its original December 2019 release date to avoid competing with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Jenkins wrote the script with Geoff Johns, president and chief creative officer of DC Comics, and screenwriter Dave Callaham.
Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer will score the film. Zimmer originally composed Wonder Woman's theme song for her film debut in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016.
Gadot noted on Dec. 23, 2018 that she had filmed in "four very different locations in three countries." According to North Wales Live, the film shot some scenes at an iconic waterfall in Snowdonia, a Welsh national park. We can imagine WW battling a baddie in front of (or under?) a rushing waterfall, can't you?
Cast: Who's who?
Returning characters
Gal Gadot as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman
Chris Pine as Steve Trevor
Robin Wright as General Antiope
Connie Nielsen as Hippolyta
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How is Steve back?!??
Warner Bros. Pictures
New faces
Kristen Wiig as supervillain Cheetah
Pedro Pascal, as villain Maxwell Lord
Soundarya Sharma, in an unknown role
Plot news, rumors and theories
Don't be a Cheetah! Cheetah has long been a nemesis of Wonder Woman, with four different incarnations since her 1943 debut. (In 2001, a man briefly took on the title of Cheetah, but the other three have been women.) Early Cheetahs were just women in costumes, but more recent versions morph into a human-cheetah hybrid and have enhanced strength and agility, plus deadly claws and fangs. Thanks to a photo Jenkins shared in late June 2018, Wiig's version of Cheetah was revealed as archaeologist Barbara Minerva, but there's also no need for the film to stick closely to any comics story.
Not a sequel: Producer Charles Roven told Vulture director Jenkins is "determined that this movie should be the next iteration of Wonder Woman but not a sequel." He notes the movie is set in a completely different time frame and tells a very different story than the original. Maybe that explains how Steve Trevor returns -- it's a new iteration where he didn't die.
To the Max
In October 2019, director Patty Jenkins confirmed that Pedro Pascal will play villain Maxwell Lord. In the Wonder Woman comics, Lord is a human businessman who can control others' minds. Jenkins and Pascal worked together on the 2015 TV movie Exposed. Game of Thrones fans will know Pascal for his role as dashing but doomed Oberyn Martell. He's seen in the trailer as an infomercial king.
Totally awesome '80s: The film is set in 1984, the year of the Los Angeles Olympics. To get into the 1980s spirit, the cast also posed for a photo that mimics the poster for John Hughes' 1985 hit The Breakfast Club.
Pining for Pine: Yes, Chris Pine, who played Steve Trevor in the first film, is back, despite apparently dying in the first film. But anything goes in comic resurrections (just ask thawed-out Captain America over at Marvel). And now that he's shown up in the first trailer, we're left to wonder exactly how he makes his return.
