Tom Cruise’s career has been littered with box office hits, but none can match Top Gun: Maverick in terms of numbers. The movie grossed more than $1 billion in global ticket sales, making it the biggest hit in the star’s four-decade-long career. Money that big demands a sequel, which explains why a third Top Gun film is currently in the works.

Rumors of a Top Gun 3 have been swirling since 2022, when co-star Miles Teller mentioned that he had “been having some conversations with [Tom Cruise] about it” but stopped well short of making any confirmation either way. Paramount still hasn’t officially confirmed the movie, but Deadline has reported that the project will include Cruise and hi Top Gun: Maverick stars Teller and Glen Powell. Ehren Kruger, who co-wrote the Maverick screenplay, is currently working on a draft script, according to the report.

The news comes just days after Cruise and Warner Bros. announced a deal that puts the star firmly in the woodwork at the studio and adds yet another movie to Cruise’s schedule before he could star in films for Warner Bros. Paramount's as-yet-untitled sequel to Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 is due to release in August 2025, followed by a movie at Universal Pictures that will reportedly include filming the star on a spacewalk ouside the International Space Station. Assuming that Top Gun: Maverick comes in either before or after that movie, Warner Bros. will probably be waiting until late 2025 before their deal with Cruise bears fruit.

No release date for the new movie has been given, and given the Mission: Impossible production, it will likely be at least a year before filming is underway. Whenever it happens, Top Gun 3 will have a tough time replicating the success of its predecessor, which managed to capture the energy of the original Top Gun while giving plenty of focus to the film’s younger stars.

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