Paramount Pictures officially announced Top Gun 3 during its annual CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas, confirming that Tom Cruise will return to the role that first made him a superstar. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer is also coming back. No other returning cast members have been confirmed at this stage, and director Joseph Kosinski has not yet signed on to helm the sequel.
The announcement marks the formal beginning of a project that had been quietly developing since 2024, when screenwriter Ehren Kruger was first attached. Kruger previously co-wrote Top Gun: Maverick alongside Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie.
Cruise was not on the CinemaCon stage when the news broke. He had appeared two days earlier at the Warner Bros. presentation, where he shared an early look at his upcoming film Digger, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Attendees described Cruise as nearly unrecognizable in the dark comedy, in which he plays a billionaire responsible for an environmental disaster.
The franchise that refused to stay grounded
Top Gun: Maverick arrived in 2022 under circumstances that made its success feel almost unlikely. Many theaters were still operating at reduced capacity during the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet the film grossed $1.5 billion worldwide against a $170 million production budget. It earned six Academy Award nominations, including best picture, and gave the theatrical exhibition industry one of its most significant lifts in years.
Cruise reprised his role as Lt. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, 36 years after the character first appeared in Tony Scott’s 1986 original. In Maverick, the now-seasoned pilot returns to the famous naval flight school to prepare a new generation of aviators for a high-stakes mission. The film also brought him face to face with Lt. Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw, played by Miles Teller, the son of his late best friend Goose.
The ensemble cast included Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, Greg Tarzan Davis, and Manny Jacinto as the new class of pilots, alongside Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, Charles Parnell, and Bashir Salahuddin. Maverick also served as the final film role for Val Kilmer, who reprised his original character Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky. Kilmer died in 2025.
Top Gun 3 inside a changing Paramount
The confirmation of Top Gun 3 comes at a pivotal moment for Paramount. The studio completed its merger with Skydance in 2025, with Skydance chief David Ellison identifying the franchise as a strategic priority for the combined company. Paramount is also in the process of acquiring Warner Bros. in a deal valued at $111 billion, which means Top Gun 3 will ultimately be released under a significantly larger entertainment umbrella.
Ellison has been open about his ambitions for the new entity, stating during the CinemaCon presentation that he hopes to release 30 films per year under the combined Paramount and Warner banner. Other titles highlighted during the presentation included Scary Movie 7, a Call of Duty adaptation from Taylor Sheridan, a new film from Damien Chazelle starring Cillian Murphy, and a horror project set in the Longlegs universe.
Bruckheimer acknowledged in 2024 that moving the project forward required patience given Cruise’s packed schedule. The actor has spent recent years completing the Mission: Impossible franchise while developing several new projects simultaneously. Cruise himself noted that finding the right story for a third Top Gun film requires the same careful approach that made Maverick worth the wait, pointing out that it took 35 years to crack that sequel properly.
No production timeline or release date has been announced for Top Gun 3.
