Here’s a curious surprise, it seems that Twenty-One Pilots was originally meant to work on the soundtrack for Top Gun: Maverick. While many know that Lady Gaga took on that task with her ballad Hold My Hand, we may have gotten a very different soundtrack at an earlier point. The news comes from the Twenty-One Pilots frontman Tyler Joseph, who shared on the radio station KROQ the story, making the claim that it was the film’s main star and producer Tom Cruise who had them kicked off the project after already signing on by Paramount Pictures.
I was working with the music placement person for the new ‘Top Gun’ on writing a new song for them, and then I believe Tom Cruise came in and just fired everyone. You’ve seen that new ‘Top Gun’ thing that he’s got? The trailer has been out for, like, three years, so there’s been a few overhauls, and I was a part of that, so, they moved on.
Tyler Joseph
It’s certainly not unheard of that Cruise has shown his influence over projects, especially a legacy sequel. He also highlighted that he worked on a few scenes to write the original music. So, it’s curious that they got kicked at a later point, highlighting it was around the time he saw the footage.
It was actually pretty soon after they brought me in to show me parts of the movie and what they were looking for and stuff. Then I got word that there was like a wholesale swap.
Tyler Joseph
Lady Gaga took over at that point, but it’s unclear what may have exactly led to that “wholesale swap” as he points out. It’s not great when you start working on a project to suddenly get kicked, but it probably will never be confirmed if it truly was Cruise that got them kicked off the project.
Source: IndieWire
