After Top Gun: Maverick became the highest grossing film of Tom Cruise’s career, a third Top Gun movie is under way.
Puck reports that Top Gun: Maverick co-writer Ehren Kruger is “officially at work” on a script for the project, which intends to reunite Cruise with fellow Maverick stars Miles Teller and Glen Powell. No director has yet been confirmed, but Puck suggest that Maverick’s Joseph Kosinski is in the frame, and will likely act as a producer on the project also.
Featuring Cruise as navy pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, now mentor for a new generation of fighter pilots including Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Teller) and Jake “Hangman” Seresin (Powell), Top Gun: Maverick was a belated sequel to the 1986 film Top Gun, and amassed more than $1.49bn in box office revenue worldwide to become Cruise’s best performing film. Mission: Impossible – Fallout, released in 2018, had previously been the actor’s most successful with $791.1m.
The news comes against a backdrop of high-level studio manoeuvrings over Cruise’s career. On Tuesday, Warner Bros announced they had signed a non-exclusive deal with Cruise to “jointly develop and produce original and franchise theatrical films”. However, Top Gun remains a property owned by rival studio Paramount, which will oversee Top Gun 3, likely to be Cruise’s next film. Paramount also controls the Mission: Impossible series, the eighth instalment of which was delayed by the Covid pandemic. Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two is due to be released in May 2025.
