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Tom Cruise doesn't agree to just any film, heck he turned down a role in Iron Man, one that made billions at the box office.
At the end of the day, the actor needs to have a strong passion and desire for the project, thankfully that came to fruition for the Top Gun sequel.
Cruise continues to be one-of-a-kind doing his own stunts, and forcing a film to reshoot certain scenes because they weren't dangerous enough, just ask Jennifer Connelly. The actor has his ways and truth be told, he was hesitant to tackle the Top Gun Maverick project.
Let's take a look at how it all changed.
Tom Cruise Didn't Want To Make Another Top Gun
We complete understand why Tom Cruise had concerns over making a sequel of Top Gun. The original was quite the classic and tampering with such a project is no easy task.
The actor admitted this was a request by fans for years, however, he didn't want to make a sequel just for the sake of making it and cashing in. The actor knew if he would agree, it needed to be something different and most of all, special.
"It was something that Top Gun people have been asking for 36 years and I was like.. how are we going to do this?” he said alongside 7 News.
“Doing the original, that was one thing, but how do we create something to give that audience that same kind of experience? It was something that I’ve lived with for many years.”
"I want to entertain the audience, I want to give them what they want, but I was not just going to do it just to do it.”
Despite Cruise's reservations, director Joseph Kosinski took a major risk, flying to Paris and pitching the idea while the actor shot Mission: Impossible.
A 30-Minute Meeting Changed Everything For Tom Cruise And The Future Of Top Gun
We can only imagine what was going through the mind of Joseph Kosinski once he arrived in Paris. The director was basically told he only had 30-minutes to pitch Cruise and in addition, he found out that the actor wasn't keen on making another Top Gun.
The director discussed the day alongside Polygon, "I basically had 30 minutes to pitch this film, which I didn’t realize when we were flying over. But when I got there, I found that Tom really didn’t want to make another Top Gun."
Not only was the pitch a success, but Cruise ended up calling the studio himself at the end of it, something that blew away everyone in the room.
"And at the end of the pitch, he picked up the phone, he called the head of Paramount Pictures and said, “We’re making another Top Gun.” It’s pretty impressive to see the power of a real movie star in that moment."
It was a huge moment for everyone one involved and ultimately, it was the script and how real it came across that really captivated the star.
The Honesty In The Top Gun Maverick Script Hooked Tom Cruise
Luckily for Joseph Kosinski, the director had worked with Tom Cruise in the past, therefore, he knew how to pitch the actor. The director put an emphasis on emotion and the characters. Cruise had an appreciation for this element, especially when it came to the honesty that came across the pages.
"I think that was honestly the element that really grabbed Tom, because it gave him an emotional reason to return to this character."
Cruise also loved the idea of finding Maverick and what he'd been up to after all this time, "What’s Maverick been doing? You know, where do we find him?"
"And this is kind of my own passion, you know, coming through and pitching the Darkstar sequence [in the beginning], just being someone who has always loved airplanes and aerospace and studied aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering and loved The Right Stuff. So the idea of finding him as a test pilot on the bleeding edge of what’s possible seemed to me like the perfect way to find him, and Tom loved that."
It all worked out for Cruise and the Top Gun Maverick team, as the film was a major success despite the massive expectations.
Surreal to think that it all started thanks to a 30-minute pitch between takes.
