Paramount has officially moved forward with Top Gun 3, and Tom Cruise is back as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. The studio made the announcement last week at CinemaCon, moving the long-discussed sequel from speculation to active development.
The new film does not have a shooting date yet, but the project is already taking shape. Christopher McQuarrie, who co-wrote Top Gun: Maverick and has worked with Cruise on Valkyrie, Edge of Tomorrow, Jack Reacher and several Mission: Impossible films, is working on the screenplay. Paramount had already made clear in 2024 that another sequel was in the works, but this is the first formal step toward production.
The franchise has been a money machine since the original Top Gun arrived in 1986, but Top Gun: Maverick turned it into something larger. The 2022 sequel brought in 1.5 billion dollars at the box office and introduced a younger cast that included Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman and Monica Barbaro. Steven Spielberg later thanked Cruise for "saving Hollywood's ass" with the film, a rare line that captured just how much the movie mattered to studios still trying to recover their footing.
There is, however, an early wrinkle. According to Puck News, Joseph Kosinski will not return to direct Top Gun 3, even though he guided Maverick to its huge box-office run and took over the franchise from the late Tony Scott. That leaves the third film with Cruise, McQuarrie and a script in progress, but no director or production start date. Miles Teller said in May 2022 that he had pitched a sequel idea called Top Gun: Rooster, though there is no sign that concept is the one Paramount is pursuing.
Cruise, 63, is not expected to jump straight into the cockpit. He will spend the next few months promoting Alejandro González Iñárritu's film Digger, which means the road to Top Gun 3 is still measured in months rather than days. The big question now is not whether Paramount will make another one. It is who will be behind the camera when it does.