NEED TO KNOW
Top Gun producer Jerry Bruckheimer and screenwriter Jack Epps Jr. remembered how they got Tom Cruise to agree to star in the film
Cruise took a ride in one of the planes and fell in love with the idea
The 1986 film became the highest-grossing of the year
Top Gunscreenwriter Jack Epps Jr. always wanted Tom Cruise to star in the film. He took a little convincing.
Epps, 76, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer opened up to The Guardian in an article published May 16 about how they got Cruise, 63, to star in their film. Epps wrote the script with Jim Cash, and he always wanted Cruise to star in the 1986 film, which would follow Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell as he trained at the United States Navy’s Fighter Weapons School in San Diego.
“I was a Tom Cruise fan at that time — still am — so we wrote this with Tom Cruise in mind as Maverick,” Epps remembered. “I loved his movies: he’s such an energetic actor, he connects with the audience.” Cruise’s movies at that point included 1983’s The Outsiders, All the Right Moves and Risky Business, which helped cement him as a movie star.
From left: Rick Rossovich, Val Kilmer, Tom Cruise, and Anthony Edwards in ‘Top Gun’
Credit: Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock
“We were finishing up the script and I turned it over to Jerry Bruckheimer at the gates of Bel Air on a Saturday night. I said, ‘Jerry, think Tom Cruise when you read this,’ ” Epps said. Bruckheimer and producer Don Simpson loved the script and thought casting Cruise was a “great idea.”
Now the men just had to convince Cruise to say yes, which Bruckheimer said wasn’t easy. At the time, he had grown his hair long to appear in Ridley Scott’s 1985 film Legend.
Bruckheimer remembered, “We couldn’t quite get him to commit so I arranged for him to fly with the Blue Angels in El Centro, California. He had long hair and a ponytail and they saw this guy walk up and they said, ‘We’ll get this hippy a real ride.’ ”
Epps remembered that they didn’t even know who Cruise was. “They do what they like to do: they took him up, they shook him around, he barfed on himself, and he came out and said, ‘I love this.’ ”
Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’
Credit: Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection
Bruckheimer said that the moment he got out of the plane, he called the producer to tell him, “I’m in.”
Top Gun, directed by Tony Scott, also starred Anthony Edwards, Val Kilmer, Tom Skerritt and Kelly McGillis. It became the highest-grossing film of 1986. Worldwide, it made over $350 million.
A sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, was released in 2022, directed by Joseph Kosinski and produced again by Bruckheimer. Cruise and Kilmer, who died in 2025 at the age of 65, reprised their roles and were joined by Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Ed Harris, Lewis Pullman and Jay Ellis. Cruise told PEOPLE in 2022 that he wanted the movie to “be a love letter to aviation.”
Both Top Gun films returned to theaters on May 13 to mark the 40th anniversary of the first film’s release.
Back in April, Paramount confirmed that Top Gun 3is in development, reuniting Cruise and Bruckheimer for a third time.
Read the original article on People
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