Big-name Hollywood actor Tom Cruise may be in the middle of promoting his latest starrer for Universal Pictures, a reboot of the successful “The Mummy” film trilogy franchise from back in the 90s and 2000s.

But there’s another, much older franchise that his fans have been waiting for him to revive. And it’s not “Mission: Impossible” either, though he has begun shooting the sixth installment to it. Rather, older followers are still waiting for his sequel to the 1986 movie “Top Gun.” Well, during an interview in Australia Cruise just dropped a massive bombshell.

Eight years since it was first mentioned back in 2010, “Top Gun 2” looks ready to happen.

Hype intensifies

It was a very exciting moment during an airing of the Australian talk show “Sunrise” on 7 this week when the hosts went on and sounded out their guest Tom Cruise on rumors that discussion for the “Top Gun” sequel was on full blast again. As stated earlier, the actor was just there to promote the “Mummy” reboot, where he stars with Australian superstar Russell Crowe. But with some gentle insistence Cruise finally fessed up. “It’s true,” he said, repeating it over and over. Queried on when actual production may start, he then gave a general estimate of “sometime next year,” that is, 2018.

“It’s happening.

It’s really happening,” Cruise told the hosts of “Sunrise” adding, "You're the first people I've said it to, you asked me and so I'm telling you." He would not be giving further details on the groundwork for “Top Gun 2”, although this has been a favored pet project of Cruise and original producer Jerry Bruckheimer for nearly a decade now.

The last time discussion for the sequel was boosted in popularity was in January 2016 when the two men tweeted a photo of them together while discussing it.

Feeling the need

While talk of a “Top Gun” sequel was pretty strong back in 2010, it got put on the back burner when the original movie’s director Tony Scott committed suicide in 2012.

Interest in the projected waxed and waned through the passing of years but has never been definitively squashed.

The 1986 film had been a big hit with a lot of young people who were inspired to join the military as pilots. While the Grumman F-14 Tomcat fighter plane that was the centerpiece of “Top Gun” has long been retired, prevailing rumors have had it that the new aircraft that Tom Cruise’s character Maverick will pilot is the relatively new Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, which will first be used by the Navy in 2018, when the sequel might start filming.
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