Tom Cruise Reveals ‘Top Gun 2’ Teaser Photo: ‘Feel the Need’

Tom Cruise feels the need — the need for speed. The actor shared what appears to be a teaser for Top Gun 2 to his social media channels in the early hours of Thursday morning.

In the graphic for Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise stands on a tarmac in front of a jet holding his pilot’s helmet. The words “feel the need” appear on top of the image.

Cruise, 55, captioned the post with the hashtag #Day1, hinting that the crew has begun filming on the long-awaited sequel.

Fans flooded the star’s social media with celebratory comments.

“FINALLY!! Dreams do come true,” one person wrote on Instagram.

“It’s about time Ghostrider,” another said.

“Oh yeah. We going back to the danger zone baby,” someone said on Twitter along with a gif of Maverick putting on his famous aviator sunglasses.

Fans were overjoyed to hear filming had finally started on the project, as Cruise suffered a significant ankle injury while filming a stunt for Mission: Impossible 6 in 2017 that set the schedule back for both films.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer previously told Yahoo! that Top Gun 2 was scheduled to begin filming in January or February, so the injury clearly pushed the production schedule back a few months. It’s unclear if the original release date, July 12, 2019, will also be moved back.

Oblivion‘s Joseph Kosinski will be directing Top Gun: Maverick, Deadline reports. The storyline will reportedly see Cruise’s Maverick now acting as an older flight instructor. Previous rumors surrounding the sequel point to Maverick having to deal with a new era of pilot-less aircrafts and drones — in other words, technological advancements that don’t sit well with a gut-instinct flyboy like Maverick.

Cruise told Access Hollywood a little bit about the film last summer.

“Aviators are back, the need for speed,” Cruise said. “We’re going to have big, fast machines. It’s going to be a competition film, like the first one … but a progression for Maverick.”

He also said that before landing on the film’s title, he knew he didn’t want it to be a generic title like Top Gun 2.

“I didn’t want a number,” he said. “You don’t need a number.”

Cruise’s former co-star, Val Kilmer, will also reportedly be returning to the Top Gun world, having been personally tapped by Cruise himself.