‘One last ride’

Following its critical and commercial success, a Top Gun: Maverick sequel soon entered development.

Director Joseph Kosinski teased the next movie would be “much bigger” than Maverick, and would place Cruise’s naval captain in a “really existential crisis”.

The filmmaker said: “I think we've found a way to do it, not only in the scale of what we're proposing, but the idea itself of the story we're telling.

“We're thinking much bigger than … It's a really existential crisis that Maverick has in this, and it's much bigger than himself.

“It actually … I'm trying to describe it without giving anything away. It's an existential question that Maverick has to deal with, that would make Maverick feel small, I think, as a movie, compared to what we're talking about.”

The F1 director added there was “one last ride” left in Cruise’s Maverick.