Top Gun 3 is flying into existence

As Barbenheimer officially shifts over into the status of being so last year, Tom Cruise may be swooping in to save movies once again. After the runaway (fly away?) success of 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, Paramount is doing the most obvious possible thing: ordering more Top Gun. Honestly, the only surprising thing about this news is that it didn’t happen sooner.

According to Puck, the studio has tapped Maverick co-writer Ehren Kruger to work on a script for the high-flying threequel, once again uniting Cruise with his previous co-stars Miles Teller and Glen Powell. (Remember how Glen Powell was also a part of Top Gun mania before all that Sydney Sweeney stuff went down?) If and when the script materializes, Puck reports that producers Jerry Bruckheimer and David Ellison are back on board, with Joe Kosinski returning to either direct or produce.

Not much else is known about the script thus far, but if tradition is anything to go by, it will probably feature Tom Cruise in aviators and at least one steamy, shirtless sports-playing scene that will take over TikTok feeds for months at a time. There may be a mustache resurgence if Teller’s “Rooster” has anything to say about it, so be on guard for that as well.

Tom Cruise wasn’t hailed as the “savior of theatrical distribution” for nothing. Top Gun: Maverick—along with Cruise’s staunch refusal to let the movie stream anywhere for seven whole months after its release—took over the 2022 box office, bringing in a whopping total of $1.5 billion worldwide (via Box Office Mojo) and easily topping the list of Cruise’s most financially successful films. This news also comes after reports that Cruise signed a non-exclusive deal to develop movies and franchises for Warner Bros., even gaining a personal office on their lot in Burbank.

But don’t worry, fans of our atmosphere or beyond. While these originals will likely be his focus in the future, the agreement still allows him to work with studios like Paramount for this film or Universal for his upcoming space movie that is set to literally film at the International Space Station. He really is a singular one, that Tom Cruise.