Get your obnoxiously wide-rimmed aviators ready, baby: we're locking and loading for Top Gun 3. Glen Powell — man of the moment, Hollywood's next big star, he whose smile could impregnate you over Wi-Fi — and mentor-in-chief Tom Cruise are all but certain to return for a sequel to Top Gun: Maverick, with the former revealing that there's a departure date booked on Happy Sad Confused.
Of course this will come as a surprise to no one who witnessed Maverick's swooping run at the box office in 2022, where it picked up $1.49 billion worldwide. (For reference, that's between one and two per cent of the total U.S. military budget for fiscal year 2025. Not bad.) A follow-up was as inevitable as Cruise doing his own movie stunts. Strap in! Here's everything we know about Top Gun 3.
Not a lot, but it's also kind of about what he didn't say. Speaking to Josh Horowitz at a live taping of Happy Sad Confused, Powell and Twisters co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones fielded a series of quick-fire questions about who would be the likeliest to open a YouTube channel, say (Daisy), or to star in a musical (Glen, specifically a remake of Singin' in the Rain if it ever comes up). Silly question here, sillier gag there.
The hot question came at the end: “Are we more likely to get the Normal People continuation or the Top Gun sequel first?”
Powell kept his mouth shut for a second or two, before the news popped out of his mouth like his throat was going to burst if it didn't. “I mean, I have a date,” he teased with that Hollywood smise that he's become so good at. Was there any further news he wanted to share? “Absolutely not,” he continued. And he wouldn't say another word, even pushed further on whether he knows things he wasn't allowed to talk about in the room. “Josh, we should go to the next question,” he joked.
Let's read between the lines, not that we have to be especially forensic. Powell has a date — he didn't specify what for, but presumably it's when he has to turn up for pre-production. If a date is in the diary, then one can reasonably infer that Top Gun 3 will get off the ground sometime fairly soon — if its flight path stays smooth and it isn't hit by a surprise sidewinder. And Powell's conspicuous reluctance to confirm or deny whether he “knows things” about the new Top Gun means almost certainly that he does, indeed, know things.
But what things, exactly? Maybe he has been filled in on Maverick director Joseph Kosinski's story idea that producer Jerry Bruckheimer teased back in March. “We have a story. Joe Kosinski has a wonderful story idea for it, and [Tom] said ‘I really like that,’ so we're developing it,” he told ScreenRant.
That's the right question. And our answer, to be frank: no idea!
Cruise is pretty booked and busy, with work ongoing on the new Mission: Impossible which releases next summer. There's also that long-discussed space movie for which Cruise will actually go into space. Oh, and he's also pegged for a big Oscar play in the next film from Birdman auteur Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Trying to make Top Gun without Tom Cruise would be like trying to build a jet fighter without wings, so one can only imagine that the actor's schedule will play a big role in dictating the sequel's flight plan.
Which is exactly what Bruckheimer intimated towards in his interview with ScreenRant. “But you never know when it's going to get made because Tom is so busy. He's doing Mission: Impossible right now, he's got a picture after it. Hopefully, we'll get a screenplay that he loves, and we'll be back in the air again,” he said.
Smart money says Miles Teller will probably return as Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw — not that we know anything, but it's a reasonable bet given he was the lead of Maverick. In 2022, Teller told Entertainment Tonight that volleyball was on Tom Cruise's side of the beach when it comes to sequel plans. “[A sequel would be great], would be great, but that’s all up to TC. It’s all up to Tom. I’ve been having some conversations with him about it. We’ll see,” he said.
Maverick director Joseph Kosinski is reportedly working on the script, but it's yet to be confirmed whether he'll also come back as squad leader behind the camera.
