It’s official, Top Gun 3 is in development with Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer

Paramount Pictures confirmed that the film was in the works at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

Since the success of the sequel Top Gunthe desire for a third film seemed obvious. Top Gun: Maverick generated $1.5 billion at the box office in 2022 and symbolized the survival of the theatrical cinema experience, seriously impacted by Covid. It remained to be seen whether the project was feasible, and compatible with the agenda and desires of Tom Cruise, now 63 years old and back in auteur cinema with Diggerthe new film by Alejandrao Gonzales Inarritu.

“Top Gun 3 is officially in development with a well-advanced script, bringing together Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer“, declared the number 2 of Paramount Pictures, Josh Greenstein, at CinemaCon in Las Vegas this Thursday. Neither director nor release date have been announced, but we therefore know that the star and the historic producer of the franchise will be back.

The latest news is that a script has been written by Chris McQuarrie, co-writer and producer of Top Gun: Maverick and close collaborator of Tom Cruise on the latest Mission: Impossible. In May 2025, the filmmaker and screenwriter declared that he had easily imagined the story of Top Gun 3 :

“It wasn’t complicated. I thought it would be, and it’s a good place to start when you’re talking to authors and asking, ‘What are we going to do?’ Ehren Kruger proposed an idea, I said ‘Mhm, actually…’ and after just one conversation the structure was there. So no, it wasn’t hard to write. The truth is, none of these films are hard to write.”

Tom Cruise and Inarritu were at CinemaCon this week to present Diggera satirical comedy where the star will be unrecognizable as a billionaire caught in an environmental disaster.

‘This movie is crazy’ Tom Cruise is unrecognizable in first images from Digger

For this film, Tom Cruise moved to Warner Bros. But, ironically, the studio is about to be bought by Paramount Pictures, with whom he worked for three decades on Top Gun and especially the Mission: Impossible saga.

The actor was not present during the announcement but, according to the Hollywood Reporterin a video directed by Jon M. Chu (Wicked) for which he does the voice-over, we see him at the end declaring from the Paramount water tower: “The future looks bright from here“.

Last summer, David Ellison, the new boss of Paramount Pictures, declared that Top Gun 3 state for him a “priority” and that he wanted to continue making films with Tom Cruise as long as the latter was up for it.

Tom Cruise reprized his role 36 years after the first film for Top Gun: Maverickwith Joseph Kosinski directing. The latter is currently very busy and Chris McQuarrie, Cruise’s loyal collaborator, could be the ideal candidate to take over.

Who will be there to support the star on screen? We can notably expect the return of Miles Teller and Glen Powell, but no names have been made official at this stage. The cast of Top Gun 2 also included Lewis Pullman, Monica Barbaro, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Charles Parnell and Ed Harris.