| David Ellison has been trying to make "Top Gun: Maverick" since 2010. As a kid, the original "Top Gun" had sparked his love of flying and action movies. As soon as Ellison became a movie producer, he started pushing Tony Scott, its director, to contemplate a sequel. It took eight years of development, two years of production, a new director and five pandemic-related delays. But after this weekend, Ellison can finally declare victory. "Top Gun: Maverick" grossed $124 million this weekend in North America, the biggest opening of Tom Cruise's career. For Ellison and Cruise, who have worked together on eight projects, it's their first collaboration to gross more than $100 million over its opening weekend. The movie extends a recent hot streak and cements Ellison's status as one of the most successful producers in Hollywood today. His company Skydance has produced two of the most-watched original movies on Amazon ("Without Remorse" and "The Tomorrow War") and three of the biggest movies for Netflix ("Six Underground," "The Old Guard" and "Adam Project"). It also produced "Grace and Frankie," the longest-running scripted TV series in Netflix's history. This summer, Ellison will release his first animated movie, "Luck," on Apple TV+, and he remains a producer on the "Mission: Impossible" franchise. Ellison doesn't give many interviews, but he sat down on Thursday to talk about his new movie, the future of his company, and the advice he received from his father, Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison. "Top Gun" is more than 35 years old. How long has this sequel been in the works? It was the first movie I said I wanted to make when we signed our original deal with Paramount Pictures in 2010. The process started with the late, great Tony Scott. He wasn't interested in revisiting it. After a series of meetings and me bugging him incessantly he said, "Well, pitch me something." It was a seminal moment when he said yes. We then went to Tom [Cruise] and Jerry [Bruckheimer] and got the whole band back together. We were moving forward with that version when Tony passed. We hit pause for a while. The total development process was eight years, and we spent two years making it. A decade from start to finish. We finished at the beginning of 2020. The original release date was July 4 that year. After five release-date changes, it's exciting to get it out in theaters. You were a toddler when the original "Top Gun" came out. Do you remember seeing it for the first time? I saw the first movie as a little kid and absolutely fell in love and said I wanted to fly airplanes one day. I was fortunate enough to start flying at 13 years old. Did you think it was done after Tony Scott died? Jerry and I had dinner with [his brother] Ridley. Coming out of that, we felt comfortable moving forward. What role did you play in the development and production? We were part of developing every single draft of the screenplay. Tom was clear. His mantra on the movie was not "hitting a bullseye" but "hitting a bullet with a bullet." He wouldn't start until we got the script right, and it was amazing when he looked at everyone and said, "Let's go." How would you compare Tom Cruise to the other movie stars you've worked with? He's always the hardest working person in the room. If you tell Tom something is impossible, he proves otherwise. I've seen him jump off the side of the Burj Khalifa and jump out of an airplane. This movie was supposed to come out in 2020. Was there any point in the last couple of years where you wished Paramount had just put it out? Or sold it to Netflix? This was a movie always intended to be seen on the biggest screen possible. There were incoming calls, but our hope is that we're now at a place where the market is back and healthy. What is the most that someone offered for it? Let's just say, significant. What is your outlook on the movie business and movies in theaters? Covid accelerated trends that were already in place. Go back to 2019, the separation between winners and losers was getting pretty big. What do you mean by winners and losers? If you go back to 2019, you either had something that really broke out, a huge hit, or you didn't. That middle ground that used to exist really disappeared. Why do you think that is? I am not sure if you saw recent comments by James Gray, but he faulted the studios. Respectfully, I don't agree. There were several good movies that didn't perform in the mid-range. Streaming has really changed consumer behavior. When you think about what you can get in the home, the quality of the storytelling delivered, you need to look at every single project and ask, "What is the best screen to deliver it on?" You've now made three of Netflix's biggest movies and two of Amazon's. Do those feel as big in the culture as "Mission Impossible" or "Star Trek"? We made a movie for Amazon called "The Tomorrow War" which was incredibly successful on their platform. We really did feel that permeated the culture. But I also feel like the support Amazon gave us, the level of marketing behind the movie, was significant. I don't think you can undervalue how important those campaigns are. I notice you selected Amazon and not Netflix, which doesn't do a lot of marketing. [Laughs.] We are big believers in Netflix. How old were you when you started Skydance? It was 12 years ago, so I was 27. What was the mission behind it? I had the privilege of growing up in Silicon Valley and having unbelievable mentors, from my father to Steve Jobs and David Geffen, in the motion picture business. It was a new idea then, but not now, that a bridge would be built between Silicon Valley and Hollywood that would disrupt the business as we knew it. Our feature film group makes six films a year. Our TV division is making eight series this year. Our animation group is making one movie a year for the next four years and we hope to scale to two around 2025. We have two interactive game teams. And a fifth vertical we just launched, Skydance sports. Did a lot of people dismiss you as a trust fund kid? How did you get over that? When we came into town, I don't think there was single business we built where we weren't told, "You can't do it. This won't work." Was your first movie, the one you acted in? My first movie out of film school was "Flyboys." It was a humbling learning experience. Why humbling? It's not wonderful to be named one of Variety's top 10 bombs in 2006. It burns in your brain a bit. What did you learn from that? I learned the level of quality you needed to hit in terms of storytelling. We made that movie independent from distribution, which was a mistake. In 2010 you raised $350 million. A lot of that money came from your dad. Who else invested? There was the initial round, mostly from our family and a credit facility from JPMorgan Chase. "True Grit" and "Ghost Protocol" were the first movies that came out of your deal with Paramount, right? I will never forget getting the screenplay for "True Grit" sent to me. Adam Goodman sent it to me on a Friday. We said yes on Saturday. A lot of people doubted that decision because it was a Western and those traditionally haven't performed well internationally. We're incredibly proud of that. We got involved with "Ghost Protocol" very early on in the process. "Mission 3" was down significantly from "Mission 2." A lot of people were counting Tom out and counting the franchise out. It went on to become the highest grossing in the franchise at the time. How do you know when there is no juice left in a franchise? It all comes down to the story. Doesn't that mean there's always the possibility of doing another one? No, we all know franchises can burn out. A good friend of mine once said the way you build a franchise is you do your best to make a good movie. Do your best to make another good movie. If you keep trying to make good movies you'll wake up with a franchise. What was your favorite franchise growing up? "Lord of the Rings" is one of my all-time favorites. Tolkien is my favorite author of all time. Peter Jackson's adaptations are, in my mind, perfect. My wife is also a huge fan. When the rights for "Lord of the Rings" were up for sale, did you bid on them? We did. We lost. It's hard to compete with a trillion-dollar company. On that one, yes it was. You've mostly made action movies and science fiction movies. Is that your taste, or is that just what you had the option to fund? Thankfully, both. I grew up loving the types of movies we make. It was movies like "Star Wars" and the Amblin/Spielberg movies. What is your long-term plan for Skydance? You see all these other companies selling. Do you want to sell? Our company is not for sale right now. We're very much in the mode of scaling the business. We had one of the strongest years in the history of the company last year. We're on track for it to be even better this year. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Is the door open for another "Top Gun" movie? That is always up to the audience. Do you and Tom work out together? Tom and I have done quite a bit of flying together. Tom is an amazing pilot. It's him flying that airplane in every single frame. Tom and I share a love and passion for aviation. What do you like about it so much? It's the ultimate sense of freedom. You weren't a 7-year-old scared of flying? No. But I did have no G-Tolerance. When I started doing aerobatics, I'd literally get sick every time. I'd have to sit on a couch for a couple hours. Then I would get up and do it the next day. — Lucas Shaw | 
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