As well as featuring Kenneth Branagh going full John Wick as a kick-ass former KGB agent, Apple TV action-comedy Mayday is also a love letter to Top Gun and even uses footage from the ’80s classic. According to the movie’s directors, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (Game Night), it was none other than Tom Cruise who said permission: granted.
“We did use a clip from Top Gun in the movie,” Goldstein tells GamesRadar+ during an exclusive conversation at San Diego Comic-Con 2026. “It takes place in 1987, and we needed Tom Cruise’s permission for that, and he granted it.”
Both Mayday and Top Gun: Maverick share a production company in Skydance, and the Top Gun connections don’t end there. “One of our editors actually worked on Top Gun: Maverick, and so he already was well versed in aerial photography,” Daley adds.
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In Mayday, Ryan Reynolds plays Lieutenant Troy ‘Assassin’ Kelly, a US Air Force Pilot and something of a maverick himself. While Kelly is soon grounded and stranded behind enemy lines in Russia, early scenes see Kelly take to the skies in a fighter jet and a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Like Top Gun: Maverick, much of this footage was captured in-camera. “We spent a month in the south of France shooting all of our aerials because we wanted there to be as [few] false moments as we possibly could have,” Daley notes.
Despite this high-flying start, the bulk of Mayday takes place at ground level after Kelly is rescued by Branagh’s bearded, America-obsessed former KGB agent Nikolai Ustinov. Kelly has no hope of getting home without Ustinov’s help but luckily for the top gun, Ustinov is prepared to do what it takes to get an all-American hero out of Soviet Russia, even if it means betraying his own country.
The Tom Cruise-approved Mayday releases on Apple TV on September 4. For more, check out our list of the best Apple TV movies, or fill out your watchlist with our guide to the upcoming movies heading your way.
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