Paramount Pictures
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While out on the promotional trail for his new film Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, mega movie star Tom Cruise provided a massive update on Top Gun 3. According to the Oscar nominee, the project is “on the horizon.”
Speaking to the morning show Today (the Austrailian version), Tom Cruise said a third film in the Top Gun franchise in “on the horizon.” While Top Gun: Maverick was likely originally designed to be a standalone sequel, its massive success at the box office and during awards season made a third film in the series a no-brainer.
Cruise also confirmed he’s developing a sequel to his other Tony Scott-directed film, the NASCAR action drama Days of Thunder.
“We’re thinking and talking about many different stories and what could we do and what’s possible. It took me 35 years to figure out Top Gun: Maverick, so all of these things we’re working on, we’re discussing Days of Thunder and Top Gun: Maverick. There’s numerous other films that we’re actively working on right now. I’m always shooting a film, prepping a film, posting a film. I just finished a film with Alejandro Iñárritu too, who did The Revenant, that was an extraordinary experience and [Christopher McQuarrie] and I are always working on several different films.”
Released in 2022 following numerous years of delays due to global circumstances, Top Gun: Maverick gross nearly $1.5 billion at the global box office and was credited with reviving the movie theater business at a time when the industry was on the brink. As Cruise notes, Top Gun hit theaters in 1986 and its sequel didn’t come around for another 36 years later.
Cruise’s refusal to movie the film to streaming was particularly key in getting Top Gun: Maverick into theaters, which further added to the mythos of Cruise being “Mr. Movies” or the “President of Hollywood.”
At this time, given that he said he’s wrapped production on the film, it appears Cruise’s next movie will be his project with Alejandro Iñárritu. While plot details are thin, the film has been confirmed to follow “the most powerful man in the world [as he] embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.
In addition to Cruise, the still-untitled project scheduled to be released in movie theaters on October 2, 2026, also stars Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Sophie Wilde, Riz Ahmed, Emma D’Arcy, Michael Stuhlbarg, and John Goodman.