What's more hilarious than the idea of making a Top Gun 2, nearly 25 years after the original introduced us to Goose and Maverick and homoerotic volleyball? A 27-year-old son of a billionaire making it happen because the movie originally inspired him to become a pilot. No, this is very real. Vulture reports that Paramount has made offers to Jerry Bruckheimer and director Tony Scott to make a Top Gun follow-up, with plans for Christopher McQuarrie to write a new script. Given that McQuarrie wrote the giant, and sadly maligned, Cruise vehicle Valkyrie, he's just the guy to write in a small part for the original Maverick and actually expect him to accept.

This is probably what Bruckheimer was talking about back in June when he said he had been approached about making a Top Gun 2. The juice behind all of this is David Ellison, son of world's sixth-richest man Larry Ellison, who actually produced and starred in the 2006 film Flyboys, the movie you only vaguely remember starring James Franco. David Ellison is behind Skydance Production Company, and has scared up $350 million to help Paramount finance its upcoming slate of films, including Cruise's own Mission: Impossible 4. Yeah, you can see where this is going.

It somehow seems only appropriate that a young rich kid is the motivation behind this, since Top Gun seems to be a total icon of the excessive, status-obsessed 80s. They'll have to update the story for modern times, of course, and Cruise's role will be a small one, but how can a Top Gun sequel exist without being really, really tongue in cheek? For all of Tony Scott's strengths as a filmmaker-- and I do like the guy-- laughing at himself doesn't seem to be up there. The movie may turn out to be a disaster, but hey, it surely can't be as boring as Flyboys.