Trusted Tom Cruise whisperer Christopher McQuarrie is helping out with Top Gun: Maverick

Nobody gets Tom Cruise better than screenwriter and director Christopher McQuarrie, at least to the extent that anyone can get Tom Cruise, with the two first working together on Valkyrie and then reuniting for pretty much every Tom Cruise movie since. McQuarrie even directed both Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation and Mission: Impossible — Fallout, since Cruise likes working with him so much. Now, as noted in an interview with Empire, Cruise and McQuarrie are working together again on Top Gun: Maverick, which will be their 10th film. Collider’s sources have separately confirmed that McQuarrie is there “strictly for script work” and that most of the writing has already been done, so it sounds like he’s just doing some on-set punch-up for any sequences that don’t live up to Cruise’s desire to continuously risk his life.

Top Gun: Maverick is being directed by Joseph Kosinski (who previously directed Cruise in Oblivion), and it’ll feature Val Kilmer returning as the Iceman and Miles Teller as Goose’s son.