Edgar Wright is no stranger to curating soundtracks for his own films, but in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Wright revealed that he actually also helps out with other film soundtracks — including this summer’s Top Gun: Maverick.
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In the interview, it was mentioned that Wright has become part of a group of filmmakers that help each other out during the post-production process of films. For Top Gun: Maverick, Wright was asked by co-screenwriter and producer Christopher McQuarrie if he had any song ideas for an early bar sequence in the film. Wright ended up recommending “Slow Ride” by Foghat, which plays while the pilots all meet up at a bar for the first time.
“I didn’t have any [other] notes on Top Gun: Maverick,” said Wright of the interaction. “I first watched that in 2020. Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise showed it to me, and it was pretty much the film that got released, minus the Lady Gaga song. And in terms of the Foghat thing, they needed a song. My dream text to get was Chris McQuarrie saying, ‘Hey, we need a new song for the bar scene in Top Gun: Maverick. What can you think of that’s like …?’ And it was like, ‘Oh, give me 45 minutes!’ I think I still have that playlist on Spotify; it was ‘Maverick Bar.’ So that stuff is just fun to me.”
Top Gun: Maverick is directed by Joseph Kosinski, who previously worked with Cruise on Oblivion, from a screenplay written by Peter Craig, Justin Marks, and Eric Warren Singer. Since its release, the film has crossed over $700 million, making it the fifth-highest-grossing domestic movie of all time.
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The original Top Gun was directed by Tony Scott and also starred Kelly McGillis, Anthony Edwards, and Tom Skerritt. The film won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Take My Breath Away,” performed by Berlin. In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”