The Top Gun sequel is hoping to kickstart a whole new generation of quotable one-liners, summer singles sung in karaoke bars for decades to come, and an uptick in the stock price of Aviators. To do so, Top Gun: Maverick is going to need a new crop of cadets to fill out the cast. So it’s good news that Thomasin McKenzie (Leave No Trace), Charles Parnell (The Last Ship), Jay Ellis (Insecure), Bashir Salahuddin (GLOW), Danny Ramirez (Assassination Nation), and Monica Barbaro (The Good Cop) are expected to join the ensemble opposite Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Glen Powell, Jennifer Connelly and Miles Teller.


Written by Peter Craig, Justin Marks and Eric Warren Singer, with Jerry Bruckheimer, Cruise and Skydance’s David Ellison producing, director Joseph Kosinski‘s sequel arrives in theaters on July 12, 2019.


Connelly stars as the female lead, “a single mother who runs a local bar near the Navy base,” and McKenzie will play her daughter. The other newcomers Ellis, Ramirez, and Barbaro will be pilots in the U.S. Navy’s elite fighter-pilot school, alongside Teller as Marverick’s protege and the son of Nick “Goose” Bradshaw. Veteran actors Parnell and Salahuddin will play an admiral and an engineer, respectively.


Little has been revealed by way of plot, but once the sequel wraps filming, starts in on post-production, and ramps up the marketing machine, you can expect that to change. But now that the majority of the cast is in place, you probably have a good idea of how this one’s going to play out.