{"id":426912,"date":"2026-05-14T07:12:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/426912\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T07:12:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T07:12:07","slug":"tom-cruise-celebrates-40th-anniversary-of-top-gun-with-special-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/426912\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cruise celebrates 40th anniversary of ‘Top Gun’ with special surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tom‘Top Gun 3’ was recently confirmed to be in the works, with Cruise reprising his role as Maverick<\/p>\n

Tom Cruise is celebrating 40 years of Top Gun. <\/p>\n

On Wednesday, May 13, the Hollywood action star and award-winning actor marked the 40th anniversary of the first Top Gun film, which was released in 1986. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited to celebrate 40 years of Top Gun with you all. It\u2019s so much fun to see these two films back on the big screen!\u201d Cruise, 63, wrote on Instagram. <\/p>\n

In honour of the milestone, Top Gun and its sequel, Top Gun: Maverick are both back in theatres for one week only. <\/p>\n

Additionally, a third Top Gun film was confirmed to be in the works last month, with Cruise reprising his role. <\/p>\n

Directed by Tony Scott and written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr., the first Top Gun film earned Cruise his breakthrough role as LT Pete \u201cMaverick\u201d Mitchell, A U.S. Navy aviator assigned to Top Gun. It also starred Val Kilmer as LT Tom \u201cIceman\u201d Kazansky, and Kelly McGillis as Charlotte, a Top Gun instructor and Maverick\u2019s love interest. <\/p>\n

The film went on to become a cult classic, and its Oscar-winning soundtrack has become one of the most popular film soundtracks to date. <\/p>\n

36 years after the first film, Cruise reprised his role in Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, stepping back into the cockpit to train a new generation of pilots. The new faces included Miles Teller\u2019s character Bradley \u201cRooster\u201d Bradshaw, the son of Maverick\u2019s late friend Goose. The critically acclaimed sequel became the highest-grossing film of Cruise\u2019s career.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘Top Gun 3’ was recently confirmed to be in the works, with Cruise reprising his role as Maverick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-426912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}