‘Top Gun: Maverick’ duo Joseph Kosinski and Jerry Bruckheimer on the physical toll of these aerial stunts and the possibility of another sequel – rival LA3C

Tom Cruise is notorious for performing his own stunts, and Top Gun: Maverick is no exception. In fact, the entire cast went through intense training to perform many of the wild aerial stunts that audiences saw on screen when they flocked to theaters in May to celebrate Cruise’s role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell more than three times Decades repeat after the first replay game. Film has hit the big screen.

At Deadline’s Contenders’ LA3C panel, director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer detailed the physical limits each actor was willing to push to bring the film to life — and how far Cruise was willing to go to make it happen.

BOUND TOGETHER: Deadline is The Contenders LA3C: Full Coverage

“I knew we were going to get Tom on the plane, but we weren’t sure about the rest of the cast,” Kosinksi told the audience at the JW Marriott at LA Live. “So Tom created this three-month course for all actors, starting with a very basic aircraft and ending with naval aircraft. They were all able to shoot all their scenes in the jets in real life, which is just phenomenal because you can’t imagine how physically difficult it is to do what they do. You fly with real top gun pilots. They do the same maneuvers, even more intense maneuvers than during training.”

The training did not only include aerial stunts. It was also about surviving in the water, Bruckheimer said, describing one of the situations every artist had to go through. “They put them blindfolded in a cage, throw them in about two to two meters of water and turn them upside down,” he said. “They had to figure out how to get out of that cage.”

Months of training and even more time filming those stunts certainly took their toll on the cast, though Kosinski said that didn’t stop them from getting the scenes right.

“I think a few of them were struggling, but they didn’t let me know,” he said. “They kind of kept it a secret just because they wanted to make sure we had everything we needed.”

In fact, Bruckheimer revealed that only one actor did not get sick during training or during filming: Monica Barbara. “The female is the strongest of all,” he said.

The success of Top Gun: Maverick raised the question of whether audiences can expect another film in the near future, or whether it could take another 35 years Top Gun 3 On the big screen. As well as Independent thinking personKosinksi said it’s all about finding a story that needs to be told.

“Is there another story so compelling that we have to go back?” he asked, adding, “It seems to me by the end of this movie that Maverick has a little gas in the tank. He’s not going to calm down.”

Check back Wednesday for the panel video.