‘Top Gun: Maverick’ will debut at the Cannes Film Festival with a special appearance from Tom Cruise.

The hotly anticipated follow-up to the 1986 action flick - which features original stars Tom and Val Kilmer along with new faces to the franchise such as Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Monica Barbaro and Jon Hamm - will be marked by a screening at the festival next month with the 58-year-old actor “in attendance” who will be honoured for his extensive body of work.

Organisers of the film festival said in a statement: “Tom Cruise will be in attendance in Cannes on May 18, 2022 for the screening of Top Gun: Maverick, scheduled for release on May 25 in France and May 27 in the US. The festival will also pay a special tribute to Tom Cruise for his career.”

Tom will take part in an on-stage interview with the journalist Didier Allouch on 18 May and then later “walk up the steps of the Palais des Festivals for the evening screening.”

This planned “appearance” is only the second time that the ‘Jerry Maguire’ star has made it at the Cannes Film Festival, the first he made nearly 30 years ago.

The organisers said that Tom “has made only one (Cannes festival) appearance before, on May 18, 1992, for Ron Howard’s 'Far and Away', the closing film of the 45th festival. That evening, he had awarded the Palme d’or to director Bille August for his film 'The Best Intentions'.”

This week, the film’s director Joseph Kosinski praised the “huge get” of having Val come back to the sequel.

The 47-year-old filmmaker said "That was a huge, huge get – having Val come back to play Iceman.

"To get to work with an actor of that calibre, to see the chemistry, the camaraderie between him and Tom, and to have those two characters reunite in this film, was a really special moment, and one of my favourite parts of the film.”