Archive April 5, 2025

Before revealing new footage from his most recent “Mission: Impossible” film, Tom Cruise paid tribute to late “Top Gun” co-star Val Kilmer on Thursday at a CinemaCon event in a moment of silence.

At the start of his eagerly awaited keynote address at the annual industry summit in Las Vegas, Cruise said, “I’d like to honor a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer.”

“I really can’t tell you how much I admired his work, how much I thought of him as a person, and how grateful and honored I was when he joined “Top Gun” and then returned for “Top Gun: Maverick,” said Cruise.

Kilmer, one of the biggest Hollywood stars of the 1990s who rose to fame in the role of Iceman in the first film “Top Gun” in 1986, passed away at the age of 65, his family announced this week.

pneumonia was the cause of death. After being diagnosed in 2014, Kilmer had a battle with throat cancer and made his final appearance in the “Top Gun” 2022 sequel “Maverick” with a raspy voice. He was physically ill and had a raspy voice.

Cruise paused for a moment to reflect on the wonderful times we had while watching Kilmer on the big screen as he led the audience at Caesars Palace casino on Thursday.

Cruise addressed Kilmer, “I wish you well on your next journey.”

He thanked everyone for doing that, adding to the attendees: “Thank you all. He must appreciate it, I am certain.”

Kilmer’s breakout role was in “Top Gun.” He played the cocky, square-jawed, and largely silent fighter pilot in Tom “Iceman” Kazansky’s training, opposite Cruise.

In the long-awaited sequel “Top Gun: Maverick,” Kilmer’s real-life health issues were incorporated into the character.

The final reckoning, the May 23 release date for “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” was also announced by Cruise on Thursday.

Ethan Hunt, the ageless hero from Cruise’s film, is captured clinging to the wheels of a small biplane as it barrel rolls through the skies and descends a narrow canyon.

The trailer also featured numerous references to famous scenes from earlier in the eight-film blockbuster series, such as Cruise climbing the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai and dangling between lasers.

In what Paramount is marketing as supposedly the franchise’s final film, Cruise’s character says, “I need you to trust me one last time.

Hollywood studio Universal Pictures on Wednesday teased new movies from Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan, while showcasing footage from its upcoming sequels “Jurassic World Rebirth” and “Wicked: For Good” at the CinemaCon event.

Spielberg “is currently shooting a film that promises to be a return to form, in the spirit of his monumental classics,” said Universal executive Jim Orr, at the movie theater industry summit in Las Vegas.

The untitled film, out June 2026, is widely rumored to be a blockbuster sci-fi. Orr promised it would contain “a propulsive, modern, out-of-this-world twist,” without sharing further details.

Meanwhile, Nolan is in the Mediterranean shooting his star-studded version of “The Odyssey,” based on the millennia-old Ancient Greek epic saga written by Homer.

It is due July 2026, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus, alongside Tom Holland, Zendaya and Anne Hathaway.

In a prediction bold even by the standards of Hollywood marketing, Orr suggested the film “will be a once-in-a-generation cinematic masterpiece that Homer himself would, quite frankly, be very proud of.”

The comments came at CinemaCon, an annual week-long summit at which Hollywood studios present their biggest upcoming movies to theater owners and press.

A theme of this year’s event has been a drive to get studios to commit to keeping new movies in US theaters for at least 45 days before they appear on streaming.

A source with knowledge of the talks told AFP Wednesday that three of Hollywood’s six biggest studios have committed.

Universal, which has in recent years brought many of its films to on-demand streaming very soon after they debut in theaters, has not yet agreed to the new 45-day “window,” the source said. The studio did not immediately comment.

But its efforts to court movie theater owners Wednesday included showing extended new footage and A-list stars from the next Jurassic movie — out this July.

It comes from the writer of the original 1993 “Jurassic Park.” The action returns to that film’s island setting.

Unlike the “Jurassic World” films where dinosaurs freely roamed the globe, the fearsome reptiles are now once again scarce, surviving in a few remote spots.

Star Scarlett Johansson said the film would “put the scares back into Jurassic” by keeping the dinosaurs hidden and ratcheting up the suspense.

Universal’s presentation ended with surprise appearances from Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, whose second and final “Wicked” film will hit theaters November.

Val Kilmer, one of the biggest Hollywood actors of the 1990s who shot to fame playing Iceman in the original “Top Gun”, has died aged 65 after a career of memorable hits and on-set bust ups.

The cause of death was pneumonia, his daughter Mercedes Kilmer told the New York Times on Tuesday, which was the first publication to announce the news.

He battled throat cancer after being diagnosed in 2014 and appeared in the “Top Gun” sequel and a 2021 documentary appearing physically diminished and with a raspy voice.

His film credits include blockbusters such as Oliver Stone’s “The Doors,” in which he played Jim Morrison, as well as a short-lived stint as Batman in “Batman Forever” in 1995 opposite Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones.

“Once you’re a star, you’re always a star. It’s just ‘what level?’” he told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview in 2012.

“And I was in some big, wonderful movies and enjoyed a lot of success, but I didn’t sort of secure that position.”

Tributes

A versatile character actor who also cultivated a theatre career, he toggled between big-budget successes, commercial flops and smaller independent films after his breakout role in “Top Gun” opposite Tom Cruise.

Kilmer was superbly cast playing the cocky, square-jawed and mostly silent fighter pilot-in-training Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in the 1986 box office smash hit.

After a cameo in Quentin Tarantino-written “True Romance,” Kilmer also went on to star alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in “Heat”.

But he developed a reputation as a difficult actor who sometimes clashed with directors and co-stars.

A 1996 Entertainment Weekly cover story dubbed Kilmer “The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate,” depicting him as a sometimes surly eccentric with exasperating work habits.

“Hollywood and our business, it’s a very social business, and I never tried to be involved in the community of it,” he conceded in a 2012 interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Tributes flowed in on Tuesday from some of his past directors, however.

Francis Ford Coppola, who worked with him for “Twixt”, wrote that Kilmer “was a wonderful person to work with and a joy to know”, while “Heat” director Michael Mann also praised his range and “brilliant variability.”

“After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news,” Mann wrote on Instagram.

The official “Top Gun” account on X posted a picture of Kilmer as Iceman, saying he had left an “indelible cinematic mark”.

‘ Magical life’

Born Val Edward Kilmer on New Year’s Eve 1959, he began acting in commercials as a child.

Kilmer was the youngest person ever accepted to the drama department at New York’s fabled Juilliard school, and made his Broadway debut in 1983 alongside Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon.

Having fallen out of favor after the turn of the century, he was mounting a comeback in the 2010s with a successful stage show about Mark Twain that he hoped to turn into a film when he was struck by cancer.

“Val,” an intimate documentary about Kilmer’s stratospheric rise and later fall in Hollywood, premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2021 and showed him struggling for air after a tracheotomy.

It also hinted at his frustration at signing autographs at conventions which, as he put it, was like “selling his old self.”

Kilmer “has the aura of a man who was dealt his cosmic comeuppance and came through it,” US publication Variety wrote of the film. “He fell from stardom, maybe from grace, but he did it his way.”

When he reprised his role as “Iceman” in the long-awaited sequel “Top Gun: Maverick,” Kilmer’s real-life health issues, and rasp of voice, were written into the character.

“Instead of treating Kilmer — and, indeed, the entire notion of Top Gun — as a throwaway nostalgia object, he’s given a celluloid swan song that’ll stand the test of time,” GQ wrote.

On his website, Kilmer had described himself as leading a “magical life.”

“For more than half a century, I have been honing my art, no matter the medium. Be it literature, movies, poetry, painting, music, or tracking exotic and beautiful wildlife,” he wrote.

According to the Times, he is survived by two children, Mercedes and Jack Kilmer.