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aramount Pictures has the year's biggest blockbuster to date, with Top Gun: Maverick surpassing $600M do- mestically at press time. The film picks up 30 years after the original story (Top Gun, 1986), where the Navy's top aviator, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise), is called on to train the latest elite force of pilots Maverick is faced with readying the crew for a specialized mission, the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen. He's also dealing with his own uncertain future and confronting ghosts from his past. In addition to Cruise, the film stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Charles Parnell, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Greg Tarzan Davis, Ed Harris and Val Kilmer. Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, Oblivion) directed the film, whose release was delayed considerably following the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 and 2021. Kosinski also directed the music video for the Lady Gaga track "Hold My Hand," which is an important part of the fea- ture's soundtrack. Here, Kosinski speak exclusively with Post about his experience making the film and its companion music video. Sound is an incredibly important component to this film's overall experience. Can you talk about the soundtrack? "Absolutely. I mean, there's so much going on in this mix. Atmos is really well suited to be able to handle what's going on in this film." You not only directed the feature, but also the music video for Lady Gaga's "Hold My Hand," which is part of the film's soundtrack. Can you talk about how COVID affected the production of both, and did you benefit from having any extra time? "The COVID delay hit, I would say, two months before our post was due to end. So it essentially took our last two months of post and extended it into four because we couldn't do things the way we had always done them. You know, all of a sud- TOP GUN: MAVERICK DIRECTOR JOSEPH KOSINSKI BY MARC LOFTUS MAKING A BLOCKBUSTER AND ITS COMPANION MUSIC VIDEO P FILMMAKING den, everything that you would do in-per- son became remote, and we all had to figure out how to work remote instantly, so we finished maybe a month or two lat- er than we would have normally. We kind of wrapped up the film in the summer of 2020 and all went on to do other projects while we waited to release this one. "The Gaga video, I shot in the sum- mer of '21, so I'd say that probably did benefit from the fact that we had a two- year delay. I had time to actually shoot a video for the song and do it myself, which was great." The music video incorporates final footage from the film, so you were dependent on the completion of the film in order to deliver a video with those completed scenes? "Yeah, that was all finished footage. And yeah, we had the whole film done so we could integrate whatever we wanted into the video itself. "Listen, I moved to Los Angeles to do commercials and music videos. And when I got here, the music video business had kind of gone away at that point, so I never got to do a music vid- eo. As a kid who grew up watching MTV, it was something I always wanted to do. And all of a sudden, I had the opportu- nity to do a video, and to have my first one be with Gaga? And to do it for this film? I was excited!" Hold My Hand: The film's music video, featuring Lady Gaga, was shot using Sony's Venice camera too. Director Joe Kosinski