Tom Cruise confirmed Top Gun 3 is ‘officially in development with a script underway.’
The action movie star, 63, will be reprising his role in the franchise for the upcoming project, which comes three years after he appeared in Top Gun: Maverick.
On Thursday at CinemaCon, where he narrowly risked a run-in with his ex-wife, Nicole Kidman, on the red carpet — he appeared in a video at the presentation and stood atop the iconic water tower in the Paramount lot in Los Angeles.
To celebrate the occasion, he said in the clip: ‘The future looks pretty great from here.’
Paramount Pictures co-chairs Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg confirmed that Top Gun 3 will be ‘reuniting Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer’ at the presentation in Las Vegas.
Bruckheimer produced both the 1986 original Top Gun movie and 2022’s Maverick.
Top Gun 3 does not yet have a director attached, and a release date has not yet been revealed.
The sequel to director Joseph Kosinski’s 2022 film, Top Gun: Maverick, was first revealed to be in the works — with Ehren Kruger writing the script — over two years ago.
Kruger co-wrote Maverick with Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie.
McQuarrie, who also directed Mission: Impossible, previously said the storyline for Top Gun 3 was ‘already in the bag’ last May.
Cruise previously starred as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell in Top Gun, the original action drama, in 1986.
He reprised his role for Maverick 36 years later and starred alongside Miles Teller, Glen Powell and the late Val Kilmer.
Maverick became a blockbuster smash hit — grossing $1.5 billion in the global box office — from a $170 million budget.
In Maverick, Cruise’s character went back to flight school to mentor new pilots.
It’s there where he crosses paths with Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw (Teller), the son of his best friend Pete ‘Goose’ Bradshaw who died in the first movie.
Alongside Rooster and Lt. Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin (Powell), they embark on a mission together.
Powell previously hinted about the upcoming Maverick sequel and said, ‘I have a date,’ while making an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in July 2024.
In reaction to the news about Top Gun 3, many fans took to social media to express their mixed reactions.
A majority of fans praised Maverick but then opinions seemed to differ about the upcoming sequel.
Some fans seemed excited about a follow-up film while others said that Maverick would be hard to top because of ‘how good’ it was.
One fan took to X, formerly Twitter, writing that Maverick was their ‘all time favorite’ and that they were ‘looking forward’ to the follow-up film.
Another social media user tweeted: ‘How can a 63-year-old be so active and doing stunts! Waiting for those live visuals to experience it again.’
‘At this point they’re gonna have Tom Cruise flying jets at 70,’ one X user wrote. ‘Let it go bro. They made one good sequel and now they’re milking it dry.’
‘I don’t even know how you could do a third by how good Maverick was,’ another fan concurred. ‘Especially the ending.’
‘Very torn here,’ another fan wrote in agreement. ‘Would love to see another one but also Maverick was so perfect, I feel like they should just leave it alone.’
‘I’m definitely curious to see where the story goes, but I can’t help but wonder… do we actually need this? Maverick felt like such a perfect ending…,’ another fan added.
