Top Gun: Maverick Director Weighs in on Release Date Delay

One of the most anticipated movies of the upcoming summer blockbuster season was Top Gun: Maverick, the follow-up film that has been more than 30 years in the making, though the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the film being delayed until December. The film's director, Joseph Kosinski, is disappointed that fans will have to wait that much longer, but confirms that it is an experience that was intended to be shared in as large a format and by as many people as possible. Additionally, despite having an additional six months to work on the film, he still aims to complete it by its original July release date.

"We're sticking to our schedule and finishing the movie just as if it were coming out on its original release date," Kosinski shared with ComicBook.com. "Luckily, I'm in the home stretch of post-production where, despite all the restrictions of how you can work now, I'm able to continue doing my job and finish the movie, which is pretty amazing. If I were in any other phase of the project, it would be hard to do that, but because I'm in the tail-end of post, I'm able to do everything I need to to be able to to finish it."

He added, "We're sticking to our schedule and finishing the movie and just holding it for six months, which is such an interesting thing to do but it's the right decision because this is a movie that people need to see on the big screen and if there's no big screen, then you don't want to release this movie. We want this to be a shared experience on as big a screen as possible."

The new film sees Tom Cruise return to the role of Pete "Maverick" Mitchell for the first time since the original 1986 film, with Cruise and Kosinski having previously worked together on 2013's Oblivion.

As evidenced in his Mission: Impossible films, Cruise shows no signs of slowing when it comes to pulling off impressive stunts, with producer Jerry Bruckheimer teasing that trend continuing with Maverick.

"It's pretty extraordinary. All our actors had to go through three months of training," Bruckheimer revealed to the Toronto Sun. "We first put them in prop planes so they'd get used to being up there and flying. Then we put them in aerobatic prop planes so they could feel some of the G-forces. Then we put them in jets so they'd feel more. Then, finally, we put them in F-18s. But they had to go through a lot."

He added, "They had to go through water safety training, ejection training. There was a lot of difficult stuff to get this movie right. But Tom Cruise is one of the best. All these movie stars, like Will [Smith, star of Bruckheimer's recent Gemini Man] and Tom, it's not by accident. They work really hard at it. Tom, day and night, was focused on Top Gun. I'd get calls at six in the morning on a Sunday with some notes that he had. None of this comes easy and they work very hard at it."

Top Gun: Maverick will be landing in theaters on December 23rd.

Are you looking forward to the new film? Let us know in the comments below!