Tom Cruise tweets as cameras roll on Top Gun 2

Once again, Tom Cruise is feeling the need. The need for speed.

Some 32 years after the first movie, he has taken to Twitter to mark the first day of filming on the long-awaited Top Gun 2.

Posting a throwback picture emblazoned with the legend ‘Feel the need’, he’s clutching his original flying helmet, with a fighter jet blurred in the background.

Top Gun: Maverick, as its officially titled, will find Cruise reprising his role as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, the Navy airman who was recruited to the elite fighter pilot training school back in 1986.

Though the larger plot is being kept under wraps, it will confront the changing landscape of warfare, as drone technology threatens to make the role of the fighter pilot obsolete.

Joseph Kosinski will be behind the camera, who directed Cruise in the futuristic actioner Oblivion in 2013, following the late Tony Scott’s benchmark original.

Also returning to the fold will be composer Harold Faltermeyer, who penned the iconic score for the first movie.

Jerry Bruckheimer, who produced the first movie with the late Don Simpson, is back on board too, while it’s thought that Val Kilmer could also be making an appearance as Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky.

It’s set for release in July, 2019.

Meanwhile, Cruise will next be seen in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, due out July 26.

Read more
Why Solo is the first Star Wars failure
Jamie Foxx for Spawn movie
Sesame Street suing over R-rated comedy