With the Mission: Impossible franchise coming back big time with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Tom Cruise will once again reprise his starring role as Ethan Hunt. Production will have to wait though until he finishes with Top Gun 2, the sequel to the 1986 blockbuster that made the actor into a bonafide moviestar.
Cruise is all set to strap himself in the pilot seat once again as Lt. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell – a role that still ranks among his best if you ask me. The sequel has been in the works for quite some time and we can only hope the story is worthy of the iconic characters involved.
According to Paramount Pictures’ Adam Goodman, the fifth Mission: Impossible film will have to wait to start filming until after Top Gun 2 wraps.
“We’ll likely make a Top Gun sequel with Tom Cruise first. Jerry Bruckheimer would produce, with Tony Scott returning to direct. All parties are moving ahead. We’ve hired Peter Craig to write the script.”
Cruise also seems down to make a sequel to his iconic film.
“I said to Tony I want to make another movie with him. He and I haven’t made a film since Days of Thunder, ” Cruise said. “Tony and I and Jerry, we never thought that we would do it again. Then they started to come to us with these ideas of where it is now. I thought, ‘Wow that would be … what we could do now. If we can find a story that we all want to do, 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. “
A fifth Mission: Impossible was almost a given seeing as the fourth one did incredibly well, with both critics and audiences. So really, it’s no surprise that Cruise will be reprising his role again.
That being said, at one point it was rumored that Jeremy Renner was going to take over the franchise as the studio thought that Cruise was getting too old. Turns out he proved them wrong though as he showed audiences with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol that even at age 48, he’s still got it.
As for Top Gun 2, rumors have been swirling around this one for a few years now and seeing as nothing concrete has come about until today, it’s great to hear that Paramount is indeed backing it and that it seems to be moving forward.
While role are you more excited to see Cruise reprise? Ethan Hunt or Maverick? Let us know in the comment section below.