'Top Gun: Maverick': Featurette shows intense training stars went through

April 18 (UPI) -- Paramount Pictures released a 3-minute featurette Monday showing the intense training the cast of Top Gun: Maverick went through to make the long-awaited action movie.

After being delayed two years because of the coronavirus pandemic, the film is set for release in theaters on May 27. It was directed by Joseph Kosinski from a screenplay by Ehren Kruger and Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie.

"After more than 30 years of service as one of the Navy's top aviators, Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him," a synopsis said.

"When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: 'Rooster,' the son of Maverick's late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka 'Goose.' Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it."

The cast -- which includes Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Charles Parnell, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Greg Tarzan Davis, Ed Harris and Val Kilmer -- went through three months of U.S. Navy-type training where they exercised daily, were inverted, submerged in water, flew in jets doing aerobatics and ran their own cameras to capture the stunts.

Cruise said in the featurette that he didn't want to make a sequel to one of his most famous movies unless there was a story worthy of a followup and "until the technology evolved so we could delve deeper into the experience of a fighter pilot."

"The first movie was something that changed a generation, so this is exciting to come back and get in those jets again," added producer Jerry Bruckheimer.