Tributes paid to Tyneside-born Top Gun director Tony Scott
Tributes to filmmaker Tony Scott have been flooding in from across the globe after details of the North Shields-born director’s sad suspected suicide in Los Angeles emerged.
Scott’s brand of high budget action movies have taken more than $2 billion worldwide and include Top Gun ($354 million) and Beverley Hills Cop II ($315 million). Other highlights include Days of Thunder (Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Michael Rooker), Crimson Tide (Gene Hackman, Denzel Washington) and True Romance (Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Christian Slater).
Earlier this year, Tom Cruise confirmed that he was in talks with Scott about making a sequel to Top Gun. Cruise shot to prominence in the 1986 fighter pilot drama, which despite receiving mixed reviews became one of the highest-grossing films of the 1980’s. Scott was approached to direct Top Gun after producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer saw an advert which he had made for Saab in the early 1980’s in which a car races a jet plane.
Scott never received an Oscar during his career and though many of his films attracted critical reviews, they nonetheless secured worldwide popularity.
Scott had recently collaborated with his brother, Alien and Blade Runner director Sir Ridley Scott on Killing Lincoln, a film based on the best-selling book by Bill O’Reilly. The pair had also made Coma together, a four-hour medical which was due for release next month.
“Tony Scott had an immense ability to deliver big budget, big cast action movies with huge global box office appeal,” said John Tulip, Northern Film & Media’s managing director.
“His legacy is the inspiration of a generation of filmmakers through some of the most popular films ever made. Few can lay claim to have been instrumental in launching the careers of Hollywood superstars such as Tom Cruise and he will forever have a prominent role in the North East’s rich film heritage.”