The new issue of Total Film will feature Tom Cruise and the cast of Top Gun: Maverick, including new stills. The magazine hits newsstands this Thursday, March 31st, here’s a preview of the cover and subscriber cover, photos and below are tidbits from their website:

Tom Cruise talks Top Gun: Maverick: “It was now or never”

Exclusive: Tom Cruise tells Total Film he wants “to put the audience inside that F/A-18”

Top Gun: Maverick has been a long time coming. Now, though, 36 years after the original flew into cinemas, Maverick returns.

“Originally, I wasn’t interested in doing a sequel,” star and producer Tom Cruise tells Total Film magazine in the new issue, featuring Top Gun on the cover. “All over the whole world, people were asking for it, and asking for it. [Producers Don] Simpson and [Jerry] Bruckheimer – I remember back in ’87, they had an idea. It was the germ of the idea, actually, that ended up with the concept of [Top Gun: Maverick].”

That kernel was the relationship between Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell and Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw, the son of Mav’s former Radar Intercept Officer, Nick Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), better known as Goose. Goose died in the first film during an ejection gone wrong, sending Maverick into a guilt-ridden crisis. But, explains Cruise, “Just through time, the story was never right. I don’t do things just to do it.”

Cruise was also waiting for the technology to reach a certain point to enable him to bring the audience into the cockpit, “to put the audience inside that F/A-18”.

The sequel idea never really went away. “I had lots of discussions for years with Tony, with Jerry, with McQ [Christopher McQuarrie] about it, and when I was doing Oblivion, talking to Joe [Kosinski, director],” continues Cruise. “I just had to wait for that right moment. And I realized it was either going to be now or never. And basically, I liked the concept of the idea. And I was like, ‘Alright…’”

“We certainly played around with it,” says producer Bruckheimer of the decades-long development process. “But we never solved the problem of how to make another film.” Things kicked up a notch when Bruckheimer and Cruise met with Joseph Kosinski in Paris, during the shooting of Mission: Impossible – Fallout. “Joe had an idea for the movie,” explains Bruckheimer matter-of-factly. “And Tom loved the idea. And we loved it. So that’s where it all started.”

Top Gun: Maverick opens in UK cinemas on May 25, and US cinemas on May 27. For much more from Cruise, the new cast, and the filmmaking team of Kosinski, Bruckheimer, and McQuarrie, check out the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves on Thursday 31 March.

The Top Gun: Maverick cast reveal all about “Tom Cruise boot camp”

Miles Teller tells Total Film: “We did flight training for three months before we started filming… We got put through the wringer”

Tom Cruise didn’t become the world’s leading action hero by accident – the actor works hard, and he expects his colleagues to do the same. That’s perhaps never been more true than on Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel 36 years in the making.

Speaking to Total Film magazine in the new issue, featuring Top Gun: Maverick on the cover, Cruise says it was essential to bring together a team with no egos as they needed the “commitment to shoot the actors practically, inside the Boeing F/A-18 Superhornet jets.”

“I developed a whole program for the actors, and how we could get them in the [F/A-18s],” he continues. “It was every step of the way. I had to teach them how to fly. I had to teach them how to handle gs. I had to get them confident in the aeroplane.”

“We were all mini Toms making this movie,” says co-star Miles Teller, who plays Goose’s son, Rooster. “He put us through… I’ll just call it a ‘Tom Cruise boot camp’. We were getting in killer shape. And also for the stunts and stuff that Tom does in movies, it’s usually a very specific type of training. You’re not just going into the gym and lifting some weights. We did flight training for three months before we started filming… We got put through the wringer.”

The sheer amount of time the cast spent in the skies marks a significant shift from Cruise’s experience on the first film. Ahead of shooting the original, he stipulated that he’d be filmed in a Grumman F-14 Tomcat jet. “When I first committed to the first Top Gun, I did it based on the fact that I’d be filmed in the F-14, and I’d get to fly in the F-14,” he says. “I wanted to give the audience that experience of what it’s like being a fighter pilot, and what that world is like, and the culture of it.”

But the actual time up in the air was limited, and the footage of the largely unprepared actors not that useful. “On the first movie, we put all the actors in an F-14, and we couldn’t use a frame of it, except for some stuff on Tom – that was it,” recalls producer Jerry Bruckheimer. “Their eyes were rolling back into their heads. They were throwing up. So Tom remembered that, and since he’s an avid pilot, he said, ‘We’ve got to train them to be able to handle the g-forces.'”

For much more from Cruise, Teller, the new cast, and the filmmaking team of Joe Kosinski, Bruckheimer, and Christopher McQuarrie, check out the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves on Thursday 31 March. Top Gun: Maverick opens in UK cinemas on May 25, and US cinemas on May 27.

Tom Cruise returns as Maverick in these exclusive images from the Top Gun sequel

Plus, a new look at Miles Teller as Goose’s son, Rooster

For a sequel to a film built around the need for speed, Top Gun: Maverick has been a long time coming. Recent additional delays caused by the pandemic mean that this sequel is finally touching down 36 years after the original landed.

That’s a long wait for fans who’ve been clamouring for more since Tony Scott’s fighter-pilot drama took their breath away in 1986. But, Maverick, true to his call sign, has never played by the rules.

In the cover story of the new issue of Total Film magazine, Tom Cruise and the cast and filmmakers of Top Gun: Maverick talk in depth about the years in the making sequel. Below, you can check out three exclusive new images from the issue:

The long-anticipated sequel sees Tom Cruise’s titular aviator, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, back in the cockpit once more. When we pick up with Mav in Top Gun: Maverick, he’s still taking to the skies as a test pilot, having avoided the promotions that would chain him to a desk.

A highly specialised mission requires him to train a detachment of graduates from Top Gun (the United States Navy’s Fighter Weapons School, to give it its more formal name). So we’re talking the best of the best *of the best* young Naval Aviators. Of course, among their number is Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the son of Mav’s former Radar Intercept Officer, Nick Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), better known as Goose. Goose died in the first film during an ejection gone wrong, sending Maverick into a guilt-ridden crisis.

Top Gun: Maverick opens in UK cinemas on May 25, and US cinemas on May 27. For much more from Cruise, Teller, the new cast and the filmmaking team of director Joseph Kosinski, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie, check out the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves on Thursday 31 March.