The cast of Top Gun 2, officially titled Top Gun: Maverick, has added Jon Hamm and Ed Harris. But they won’t be alone.

The veteran actors will be accompanied by some new faces, some of whom are new to the game. Thomasin McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit), Charles Parnell (A Million Little Pieces), Jay Ellis (Insecure), Bashir Salahuddin (GLOW), Danny Ramirez (Assassination Nation), and Monica Barbaro (The Good Cop), are also joining the cast in a variety of roles. More on the story below.

Original Top Gun stars Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer are returning for Top Gun 2, but now a newcomer is joining the cast.

It’s being reported that Whiplash star Miles Teller has signed on for the sequel, which is officially titled Top Gun: Maverick. But while he wasn’t in the original—in fact, he hadn’t even been born when the original was released—he is playing a character very much tied to the original. Teller will be playing the protege of Cruise’s Maverick, and the son of Maverick’s co-pilot in the original, Goose, who was played by Anthony Edwards.

After many years of rumors and whispers and a lengthy stay in development hell, and 32 years after the original was released, Top Gun 2 has officially begun production.

The news was shared by original star Tom Cruise, who’s set to reprise his role as Maverick in the follow-up, in a tweet sent out last night. More info on the sequel and Cruise’s tweet can be found below.

The Jungle Book
Director: Jon Favreau
Screenwriter: Justin Marks
Cast: Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong’o, Scarlett Johansson, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Walken, Neel Sethi
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios
Rated PG | 106 Minutes
Release Date: April 15, 2016

There is a fine line that filmmakers walk when reimagining a classic like Disney’s The Jungle Book. The animated film, released in 1967, has a special place in the hearts of fans who enjoyed watching a boy who lived in the jungle and was raised by wolves become a man. Though there have been many iterations and adaptations, that film is probably the most recognized. Now we flash forward to 2016, nearly 50 years since the release of the film where Disney has already created a successful formula of turning those animated classics into live-action blockbusters.

The film is storytelling come to life in every sense of the word. Like a parental figure reading a story to their child. Jon Favreau (Iron Man), faithfully adapts the film for the newer generation, while still paying respect to those who loved the original. Some might consider that his vision for this surpasses the original. Others might think it succeeds in its own right. In the end, the film is nostalgically joyous and a romping good time.

Disney’s recent turn to modernize their animated classics by giving them a live-action adaptation has been a successful product thus far. With Maleficent and Cinderella already proving to be box office hits, the studio shows no signs of slowing down, by releasing more of these adaptations. Perhaps the most interesting of all the adaptations would be The Jungle Book. Now, it’s not interesting in a perplexing manner, but in how they approached the production of the film. The adaptation combines live-action and CGI to form a beautiful story, based on the animated film and Rudyard Kipling’s classic novel.

During the film’s presentation at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, CA, today, director Jon Favreau talked about the production of The Jungle Book, with his cast Ben Kingsley, who voices Bagheera; Lupita Nyong’O, who voices the protective mother wolf Raksha; and newcomer Neel Sethi, who plays the human lead Mowgli.

More on the production of the film as well as description of the footage here below.