In Paramount+'s At Midnight, Alejandro (Diego Boneta) is a hotel manager. Sophie (Monica Barbaro) is a movie star. He's focused on opening his own hotel. She’s trying to focus on shooting her new superhero film. But she catches her co-star and boyfriend (Anders Holm) cheating.
Fate strikes when the shoot brings them all to Alejandro’s hotel in Mexico, and despite their radically different lives, Alejandro and Sophie begin to secretly meet...At Midnight.
Of course, many of you will know Barbaro best for her role as Lieutenant Natasha "Phoenix" Trace in 2022's biggest movie, Top Gun: Maverick. With Tom Cruise still hard at work on the next Mission: Impossible movies, there's been no official word on plans for more Top Gun, but everyone else involved seems keen to make a threequel happen.
We can now add Barbaro to that list, something the actor made clear when we spoke to her about At Midnight earlier this week.
"I would absolutely love to revisit Pheonix and get to be in her shoes again," she tells us in the video above. "To the extent I feel they should make another movie right away? I think their patience with this particular franchise…I really respect that they’ve taken their time and been very intentional in their decisions with it, choosing not to make a second one until they had the technology and a story they really liked and wanted to dive into."
"There’s something kind of beautiful about 30 years going by, and using that nostalgia but also making a very, very different movie from the original…so, I’ll respect the time if that’s what’s required!"
We certainly hope it won't take another 30 years to make a new Top Gun movie, but Barbaro is right that the lengthy wait played a huge role in the sequel's success. Recapturing the same magic three or four years from now would be no easy feat, though we're sure moviegoers would be keen to see Maverick's story continue.
There is, of course, always a chance the franchise will expand with a spin-off focusing on the younger cast, though as Cruise is synonymous with Top Gun, he'd at least have to show up for a cameo! For now, we'll have to wait and see what happens.
At Midnight begins streaming on Paramount+ this Friday, February 10.