top gun

You can say you are building a ballpark, but the anticipation accelerates when the community sees what the ballpark might look like. For the city of Ontario and its architects, the rendering of its minor league ballpark included a team name.

A placeholder, that is. The new team owners did not yet own the team. The name would come later. The Dodgers’ California League team would not move in until 2026.

On that drawing last year: the Ontario Sky Mules, with a whimsical logo of a grinning donkey wearing sunglasses and flying a prop plane. It was, frankly, awesome.

It was the essence of the minor leagues. Don’t know what a sky mule is? Hardly anyone knew what a trash panda was, either, and the Trash Pandas are one of the hottest brands in the minors.

This year, the newly hired team staff dropped hints about the actual name, about the buzz in town. On the walls of the team offices: “Cleared for Takeoff.” The city referenced ballpark fan zones nicknamed “The Airfield” and “The Tarmac.”

And, just last week, the biggest hint of all: the announcement of a naming rights deal with Ontario International Airport, close enough to the ballpark that you’ll be able to see flights take off. The ballpark name: ONT Field (spell it out: O-N-T, like LAX).

On Thursday, eight months in advance of its first game, the team finally revealed its name: the Ontario Tower Buzzers.

It’s an homage to the movie “Top Gun,” and to the defiant line uttered by the pilot played by Tom Cruise: “It’s time to buzz the tower.” The Tower Buzzers’ mascot, a bee called Maverick, is named after Cruise’s character.

The team name balances heritage and whimsy. The city is paying for the ballpark and wants to promote its airport, which was used as a World War II air base before reverting to civilian use and expanding into an Inland Empire transportation hub.

“We want to honor that legacy and have fun with it,” Tower Buzzers general manager Allan Benavides said. “We found something we think is a fun minor league name, rather than just, say, Pilots or Aviators.”

“We want to honor that legacy and have fun with it,” Tower Buzzers general manager Allan Benavides, standing in front of a rendering of the team’s new stadium, said of the name.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The Aviators? Already in use in Las Vegas. The Pilots? The name of a failed California League team in Riverside (the college landlord wouldn’t allow beer sales, which is akin to a death sentence in the minor leagues).

The Tower Buzzers should fare better, in a ballpark that figures to be the second-best place to see a ballgame in Southern California, behind Petco Park and ahead of Dodger Stadium and Angel Stadium.

The city’s latest cost estimate is $120 million, for a Class A ballpark. The stadium that opened this year for the Angels’ triple-A affiliate in Salt Lake City cost $140 million and holds 8,000.

ONT Field is expected to hold 6,500 — but with 3,200 seats between the foul poles, and the rest wherever you prefer: in the outfield, on the grass, in picnic areas, on a playground, or in bars, clubs and suites, including a couple where you can converse with the players.

There’s an ice cream parlor, a food hall, and a bar shaped like a luggage carousel. After a home run, the splash pad will erupt, and propellers will whirl in a bar. A runway will light up, and so will the antennas on the mascot.

The scoreboard is a hexagon, just like the one at Dodger Stadium. Soon to appear: a mural of Fernando Valenzuela. All fans, not just the ones in the fancy seats, can watch players in the batting cage.

On the afternoon I visited, the temperature was 108 degrees. The seating area will not have mist machines, as the Angels’ old California League stadium in Palm Springs did.

“It won’t be 108 at 7 o’clock,” Benavides said.

His target audience: the “30-year-old moms” that he said control the calendar and the spending for the family.

“Not everybody is a baseball fan, but they want to have time,” he said. “They want to be away from their cellphones and the TV and be outside, not spend a ton of money, and not have to drive to L.A. or San Diego.”

Crews work on the construction of ONT Field in Ontario last month. The team last week announced a naming rights deal with Ontario International Airport. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The Angels’ California League affiliate will play in Rancho Cucamonga, eight miles away. Another California League team plays in San Bernardino, 25 miles away. The Angels themselves are 35 miles away.

“We’re going to fight for dollars, certainly, but I think our affiliation with the Dodgers is huge,” Benavides said. “They’re the hottest brand in baseball, depending on who you ask. I’m a Dodger fan, so I think they are.

“And I think this will be the nicest minor league stadium in the country, regardless of classification.”

If the Tower Buzzers do not win that fight for dollars, Ontario’s investment in the ballpark could turn out to be a poor one.

The ballpark is the anchor of what the city is modestly calling the Ontario Sports Empire, a 200-acre facility for training and competition billed by the city as the “largest sports complex of its kind west of the Rocky Mountains.”

There absolutely is a market for sports tourism, for all those kids and all their parents shuttling to weekend tournaments in baseball, softball, football, soccer, tennis and more. But that market can be tapped without a nine-figure investment in a minor league ballpark. (The naming rights payments come from airport revenues, not city taxpayers; the airport is administered jointly by the city and San Bernardino County.)

A rendering of ONT Field, set to open in 2026.

(Courtesy of City of Ontario)

That ballpark investment is more about a local entertainment option for residents, with so many homes in the pipeline that the population could double from close to 200,000 to about 400,000 within two decades. The NHL’s Kings already have a minor league affiliate playing in the city’s arena, and city officials plan for restaurants, hotels and shops to surround the ballpark and sports complex.

Dan Bell, a city spokesman, said Ontario is adding about 1,200 new homes every year.

“And they’re reasonable,” Bell said. “You can’t afford the L.A. market anymore.”

On Thursday, at the moment the team announced the Tower Buzzers name, the team merchandise went on sale. The home jerseys say Buzzers.

So is it Buzzers or Tower Buzzers? It’s like Blazers or Trail Blazers.

“We’ll let fans decide,” Benavides said.

I still wondered about the homage. When the Tower Buzzers take the field next year, “Top Gun” will turn 40. To a fan of a certain age, the reference is obvious. It would be like opening a pizza delivery service and calling it Spicoli’s.

To a younger generation, “Top Gun” might mean a blank stare. No worries, Benavides said. You’ll be able to enjoy a night at the ballpark all the same.

“We’re not going to 100% lean into that film,” he said. “This isn’t going to be a ‘Top Gun’ museum.”

Well, then, Tower Buzzers: You are cleared for takeoff.

Tech scion David Ellison and his leadership team at Paramount sent a message to Hollywood: A new era is underway.

Nearly a week after taking the keys to the battered media company, Ellison and his top executives met with reporters at the Paramount Pictures lot Wednesday to show that they mean business.

Ellison and his team will be based in Hollywood — not New York — and they plan to view the entertainment industry through a California lens by making big investments, leaning into technology and building on popular franchises, including “Top Gun,” “Star Trek” and “Yellowstone.”

Last week, Ellison’s Skydance Media and its backer RedBird Capital Partners closed their $8-billion takeover of the firm that includes CBS, Comedy Central, MTV Networks, Showtime and the Melrose Avenue movie studio.

“One of our biggest priorities is actually restoring Paramount as the No. 1 destination for the most talented artists and filmmakers in the world,” Ellison said. “Very simply, great filmmakers make great movies.”

Such a Paramount comeback would be long overdue.

The film studio has suffered from decades of under-investment, and was often bypassed by many of Hollywood’s biggest filmmakers. The studio plans to release eight films next year, but that’s too small an output to sustain a theatrical film business, Paramount executives said.

The plan is to nearly double the number of feature films to 15 and, and eventually, 20 movies a year.

Ellison, the 42-year-old chairman and chief executive, was eager to bury his days of being a political target, following the lengthy regulatory review of the deal and President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS for its edits of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris last fall. Paramount settled the lawsuit last month, agreeing to pay $16 million.

Days later, CBS notified Stephen Colbert that it was ending his late-night talk show in May — prompting howls among some fans and raising speculation the show was sacrificed to appease Trump. CBS has said the decision was “purely” based on economics; the show has been losing money.

Programming will be created with broad audiences in mind, Ellison and his lieutenants said. Ellison said his goal is to move the company away from political divisions in an effort to reach a wider audience.

“One of the things I think is important is I don’t want to politicize this company,” Ellison said. “We’re an entertainment company first, and I genuinely believe if you’re breathing, you’re our audience. We want to be in the business of speaking to everybody.”

For Ellison, movies have been a lifelong interest. He recounted his days growing up when he, his mother and sister would go to the cinema or pick from their extensive home library of video cassette tapes.

He intends to “significantly scale” the amount of content the studio produces and has entrusted his longtime deputy Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, a former Sony executive, as co-chairs of Paramount Pictures. The studio plans to concentrate on key intellectual property such as “Star Trek,” “World War Z” and “Transformers,” with Goldberg saying that “Star Trek” is a priority across the company.

Paramount executives are also interested in filmmaker-driven original films. Late last week, Paramount said it landed an original project called “High Side,” helmed by “A Complete Unknown” director James Mangold, which reunites him with actor Timothée Chalamet.

In addition, Paramount Pictures plans to greenlight family films, with classic movies like “The Goonies,” “Gremlins” and “Night at the Museum” as touchstones, Goldberg said. There’s also interest in R-rated comedies, horror and stories that appeal to Middle America.

Paramount has no plans to crank out low-cost films for its Paramount+ streaming platform, said Cindy Holland, the new head of streaming for Paramount.

“The movies that we make will be made for theatrical,” Ellison said, adding that there is cultural significance to making films for the big screen.

Ellison also praised actor Tom Cruise, whom he met when he founded his Skydance Media company in 2010. Skydance co-produced “Top Gun: Maverick” and recent “Mission: Impossible” installments. Goldberg recounted how she and Greenstein called Cruise after Paramount unveiled its new leadership structure.

“It was to thank him for, frankly, the huge piece he’s been in Paramount’s history, Paramount’s present and how important he is for Paramount’s future,” Goldberg said. “‘Top Gun 3’ is a massive priority for us.”

The new corporate ownership structure gives the family of Larry Ellison (David’s billionaire father) and RedBird the ability to build the company for the future, rather than manage for quarter-by-quarter earnings.

The Ellison family now owns 50% of the company, and RedBird holds 20% — a dominant position. Regular shareholders have 30% of the stock in the new company. Shares soared more than 36% on Wednesday to $15.

The event included Ellison’s co-investor, RedBird founder Gerry Cardinale, who stressed his confidence in Paramount’s prospects.

Cardinale noted that he dispatched two of his top executives to join the company — Andy Gordon, a former Goldman Sachs banker is now Paramount’s chief operating officer and chief strategy officer, and Jeff Shell, the former NBCUniversal executive who’s now Paramount‘s president — to signify the importance of rebuilding.

“I’m betting my firm and my career on this deal,” Cardinale said.

On Wednesday, longtime Paramount shareholder Mario Gabelli sued Redstone and Paramount, alleging the deal structure disadvantaged shareholders other than Redstone, who received a premium for her stock.

As part of the deal, the Redstone family was paid $2.4 billion for their National Amusements Inc. firm, which held the controlling shares. After their considerable debts are paid, the family should come away with $1.75 billion. Paramount’s B-class shareholders received $15 a share.

Skydance and RedBird have promised investors that it will find $2 billion in cost savings, which means further belt-tightening and layoffs. Shell said he didn’t want Paramount to become a company that had perpetual layoffs, saying the plan was to have one restructuring and “then be done with it.”

The executives also showed no interest in cleaving off the cable channels, unlike Comcast or Warner Bros. Discovery, which are preparing for spinoffs. Shell said the diminished status of the channels gives the company opportunities to rebuild those brands.

In their first week, Ellison and RedBird have made big bets. On Monday, the company said it would spend $7.7 billion over seven years to lock up U.S. streaming and television rights to UFC mixed-martial arts fights for the Paramount+ streaming service and CBS.

In addition, Paramount in July agreed to pay $1.25 billion over five years to the creators of Comedy Central’s “South Park.” A separate deal with Trey Parker and Matt Stone allows the cartoon to run exclusively on Paramount+.

When asked what Paramount assets were underappreciated, Ellison talked about the broad reach of CBS, which just ended the regular television season in first place in prime-time among broadcast networks for the 17th consecutive year. He also mentioned CBS’ relationship with the NFL, Masters golf tournament and NCAA March Madness.

Gordon added, “I actually think every asset is underappreciated here.”

The first thing you notice in Jerry Bruckheimer’s Santa Monica office isn’t the full-size suit of armor from 2004’s “King Arthur” or the shelves lined with awards and celebrity photos. It’s the pens: dozens of ornate Montblancs, carefully arranged in display cases.

His wife gives them to him, Bruckheimer explains dryly. After nearly half a century of hits, what do you give the guy who has everything? “I sometimes write thank-you notes with them,” he says. Alongside neatly stacked copies of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times — which he says he still reads daily, in print — the pens reflect something ingrained in the legendary producer, a fondness for ritual, precision and old-school order.

Now 81, at an age when most of his peers are content to reflect on past glories in between tee times and early-bird specials, Bruckheimer still starts each day with a rigorous workout. (“I pick hotels based on the gym,” he says.) Then it’s back to doing what he’s always done: assembling the next blockbuster. Across more than 50 films — including culture-shaping hits like “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Top Gun,” “Bad Boys,” “The Rock,” “Armageddon” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” — his work has earned over $16 billion worldwide, cementing his name as shorthand for sleek, pulse-pounding entertainment. His elegant, brick-walled office, larger than the Detroit home where his working-class German immigrant parents raised him, stands as a monument to what that discipline helped build. “Our tiny little house was about as big as this room here,” he says, glancing around.

For Bruckheimer, success has never been about flash or chance. “The harder you work,” he says, in what amounts to a personal mantra, “the luckier you get.”

That philosophy is on full display in his latest production, “F1,” an adrenaline-fueled racing drama starring Brad Pitt as a retired Formula One driver lured back to the track to mentor a young phenom (Damson Idris) on a struggling team. Shot during actual Formula One races across Europe and the Middle East, and with a budget north of $200 million, “F1” speeds into theaters Friday with the kind of high-stakes ambition only someone with Bruckheimer’s track record could pull off.

Damson Idris, left, and Brad Pitt in the movie “F1.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

From the outset, the project, which reunites Bruckheimer with “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski and screenwriter Ehren Kruger, sparked a bidding war among virtually every studio and streamer, ultimately landing as a co-production between Apple and Warner Bros.

“One of the reasons I went to Jerry,” says Kosinski by phone from his car, “is because I knew I was asking two massive corporations — Apple and Formula One — to work together. They’re both incredibly specific about their brands and how they do things. It took someone with Jerry’s CEO style of producing to be the diplomat in the middle and actually make it happen. He’s seen it all.”

Bruckheimer attributes the early frenzy around the project to the package’s pedigree: an appealing story, an A-list star and the global popularity of Formula One. But for Bruckheimer, it’s not just about star power or scale. “It’s emotional, it’s exciting, it’s got romance, it’s got humor,” he says. “It’s the reason I got into this business — to make movies that thrill you on that big screen, that you walk out feeling you’ve been on a real journey and got lost for a couple of hours. That’s the goal every time.”

Pitt’s character, Sonny, is in some ways a reflection of Bruckheimer: a seasoned pro forever chasing one more victory out of a sheer love of the chase. “Jerry could easily be on an island somewhere relaxing,” says Kosinski. “But he’d much rather be on set every day, meeting actors, hassling the marketing team, dealing with the studio. He just loves the job. His passion for it seems kind of endless.”

“F1” arrives at a moment when the Bruckheimer-style movie — star-driven, high-concept, engineered for maximum emotional impact — has surged back into fashion. In truth, it never entirely disappeared. But in an age of franchise fatigue, ironic tentpoles and streaming saturation, the earnest, four-quadrant spectacle had started to feel like a relic — until “Maverick” reminded Hollywood how potent that formula could still be.

The 2022 sequel didn’t just help bring moviegoing back to life after the pandemic; it earned Bruckheimer his first best picture Oscar nomination and raked in a staggering $1.5 billion worldwide. Even he didn’t see that coming.

“The early tracking said that you’re not going to get young people — nobody under 35 or 40 cares about this movie,” he remembers. “It ended up surpassing every possible metric. Anybody who tells you they know what’s going to be a hit, they don’t have a clue. You just don’t know.”

Tom Cruise in a scene from “Top Gun: Maverick”

(Paramount Pictures)

“F1” is not Bruckheimer’s first time around the racing track. Thirty-five years ago, at the height of his era-defining run with his late producing partner Don Simpson, he made “Days of Thunder,” a testosterone-fueled NASCAR drama that reunited the “Top Gun” team of Tom Cruise and director Tony Scott. The film epitomized the Bruckheimer-Simpson formula: glossy visuals, radio-ready soundtracks and MTV-style swagger. Tales of ballooning costs, nonstop rewrites, off-screen indulgence and on-set clashes swirled around the production, becoming the stuff of Hollywood lore.

Asked about the chaos surrounding “Days of Thunder,” Bruckheimer answers with his trademark restraint, the measured calm of someone who has spent decades managing egos, headlines and costly productions.

“There were definitely rewrites — that’s true,” he says. “As far as the budget going up, Paramount had a strict regime, and it’s not like you could go over budget easily. We wrecked a lot of cars, I’ll tell you that. I don’t think there was one standing at the end.”

Bruckheimer remembers the shoot as tough but exhilarating, a product of Scott’s notoriously seat-of-the-pants directing style. “Tony was just balls to the wall,” he says. “Joe [Kosinski] is balls to the wall too, but calculated. Joe’s got everything planned out. Tony would get on the set and see something over there and say, ‘We’re changing it, we’re going over there.’ It was a little more of a helter-skelter approach, but we somehow got through it. We held it together.”

By the time “Days of Thunder” was released in 1990, Bruckheimer and Simpson had spent nearly a decade together — a combustible but wildly productive run that had already delivered “Flashdance,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Top Gun.” Simpson, with his insatiable appetite for drugs and Hollywood excess, could be volatile and self-destructive. But Bruckheimer credits him with sharpening his eye for story and deepening his understanding of how the business really worked.

“I started in commercials — little 60-second stories — and Don was trained as a story executive,” says Bruckheimer, who began his career in advertising in Detroit and New York. “He was developing 120 projects every year so he knew every writer, every director. He had this great wealth of knowledge about the business: who’s good, who’s not good, who can talk a good game but can’t deliver. He was great with story and humor. He just was a genius at all this kind of stuff.”

The partnership was a crash course for them both: an informal academy with a class roster of two. “I went to school during those years — and so did he,” Bruckheimer says. “He didn’t know how to make a movie. He was an executive, so when he walked on set, all he really knew was not to stand in front of the camera. I picked up a lot of what he knew — and vice versa.”

“I’m sure I’ll be remembered somewhere along there — maybe not, maybe yes,” Bruckheimer says, reticent to dwell on legacy. “I’m still working picture to picture.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

If Simpson was the explosive, sometimes erratic half of the duo, Bruckheimer was always the steady one: disciplined, controlled, methodical. He’s known for rarely raising his voice. But he admits even he has limits. “I try not to,” he says. “I usually don’t. But when people lie to you, when they say something’s going to be there and it’s not and they keep giving you a bunch of bulls—, yeah, you can raise your voice a little.”

Following “Days of Thunder,” Simpson and Bruckheimer would go on to make several more hits, including “Dangerous Minds,” “Crimson Tide” and “The Rock” before Simpson’s death in 1996 at age 52 from heart failure related to drug use. “It’s unfortunate that we lost him,” Bruckheimer says softly.

After decades in the business, Bruckheimer says he has learned to choose collaborators carefully. “Life’s too short,” he offers. “We’re such a small business, your reputation follows you everywhere you go.”

When his team hires a director or an actor, he says, they always do their research. “How were they on their last movie? Brad has a phenomenal reputation. Will Smith has a phenomenal reputation — minus that,” he adds, discreetly alluding to the 2022 Oscars slap. “Tom Cruise too. I’ve worked with actors who just want to know when they can leave. I try to avoid that.”

The landscape of Hollywood, of course, looks nothing like it did during the ’90s Simpson-Bruckheimer heyday. Studios that once ran on instinct and big personalities now operate more like data-driven conglomerates, reshuffling execs and hedging bets in a fractured, streaming-dominated market.

“It’s changed a lot,” Bruckheimer says. “Streaming hit a lot of places hard. They spent too much money and now they’ve got problems with that. Some of the studios aren’t healthy. But the business, if you do it right, is healthy.”

For all the hand-wringing about collapse, Bruckheimer has heard it before.

“There always was doom,” he says. “When TV came in, people said nobody would go to the theaters again. When I started, it was video cassettes. Everyone said that’s the end. Then DVDs — that’s the end. I’ve been doing this over 50 years and that doom has been there every time a new technology shows up. And yet, look at what’s happened. Look at ‘Minecraft.’ Look at ‘Sinners.’ Look at ‘Lilo & Stitch.’ If you do it right, people show up.”

He reaches for one of his favorite analogies: “You’ve got a kitchen at home, right? But you still like to go out to eat. You want to taste something different. That’s what we are. We’re the night out,” he says. “And if we give you a good meal, you’ll come back for more.”

By any measure, Bruckheimer has already accomplished more than almost anyone in the business, with a far-reaching empire that spans television (“CSI,” “The Amazing Race”), video games and sports. In addition to big-budget tentpoles, he has occasionally championed more grounded, character-driven fare, from “Dangerous Minds” and “Black Hawk Down” to the recent Disney+ biopic “Young Woman and the Sea.” But for all his success, he has never stopped looking for the next story. A new “Top Gun” script is underway. “Days of Thunder” may get another lap. Even “Pirates of the Caribbean” is back in motion.

Bruckheimer ultimately credits the directors and actors — and the tight-knit team at his company — with keeping him in the game. “I’m just the guy who says, ‘You’re really talented. I want to work with you.’ ”

Even as a kid, he says, that was his gift. “I can’t focus the way a director or writer focuses — I’m too ADD. But I always put things together. I put together a baseball team and a hockey team when I was very young. I always had the ability to gather people around a common cause.”

As for thoughts of his legacy, he demurs. “I’m sure I’ll be remembered somewhere along there — maybe not, maybe yes,” he says. “I’m still working picture to picture. You’re only as good as your last movie. So you better be on your toes.”