With the death of Tony Scott last August, question marks have been hanging over the status of the long-rumoured sequel to his 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, which would have reteamed the director with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Tom Cruise. However, speaking at the 2013 Produced By conference on Sunday, Bruckheimer revealed that Top Gun 2 is still on the cards and could yet see the light of day under a new director:

“For 30 years we’ve been trying to make a sequel and we’re not going to stop. We still want to do it with Tom [Cruise] and Paramount are still interested in making it. What Tom tells me is that no matter where he goes in the world, people refer to him as Maverick. It’s something he is excited about so as long as he keeps his enthusiasm hopefully we’ll get it made.”

In the very same discussion, Bruckheimer then went on to reveal that a sequel to this year’s big-budget Western The Lone Ranger will depend wholly upon the audience response to the Johnny Depp / Armie Hammer adventure, which opens on July 4th:

“It’s always up to the audience. If the audience likes the movie then Disney will come to me and we’ll make another or it will be a one-off. It’s very hard this summer. You have to hold your seats, it’s not the number of theaters but the number of seats. [Man of Steel] is coming out this week and then next week another blockbuster will come out, if there is another blockbuster, and Superman will move to small theaters and someone else will get their seats.”