TOM CRUISE‘S TOP GUN: MAVERICK RELEASE PUSHED TO NOVEMBER

LOS ANGELES: Paramount Pictures has pushed the release Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun: Maverick” to November from July, the studio said on Friday, a move that deprives theaters of what was expected to be one of the biggest releases of the summer blockbuster season.

The sequel to 1986 hit “Top Gun” will now debut in theaters on Nov. 19, the day Paramount had planned to release Cruise’s seventh “Mission: Impossible” movie. That film was moved to May 2022, according to Paramount, a unit of Viacomcbs Inc.

Movie theater operators including AMC Entertainment, Cineworld Group Plc and Cinemark Holdings Inc hope for a summer rebound after a year of closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ninth installment of the “Fast & Furious” franchise, from Comcast Corp’s Universal Pictures, currently remains scheduled to hit cinemas on June 25.

Jennifer Connelly was scared of airplanes before filming ‘Top Gun: Maverick’.

The 50-year-old actress admitted she was afraid to tell her co-star Tom Cruise about her fear of flying and only signed on to the movie at first because her character was not supposed to have any flight scenes.

Jennifer - who plays the sequel’s female lead, a single mother who runs a local bar near the Navy base - told chat show host Graham Norton: “I was actually afraid to tell Tom at the time that I had only just recently talked myself out of a crippling fear of flying. When I signed on for the movie there was no flying for my character.”