Top Gun 3 is real. Paramount confirmed it at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday, April 16, 2026. Tom Cruise is returning as Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.
Jerry Bruckheimer is back as producer. Ehren Kruger, who co-wrote Top Gun: Maverick, has a script that is described as “well underway.”
Paramount film co-head Josh Greenstein announced it with the kind of economy that befits a franchise that does not need much introduction:
“Top Gun 3 officially in development with a script well underway, reuniting Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer.”
That is everything that is confirmed. Everything else, the director, the supporting cast, the release date, the plot, is currently unknown.
How Was ‘Top Gun 3’ Announced?
Cruise was not onstage for the Top Gun announcement, which is the kind of move that is very on-brand for a man who has spent 40 years cultivating an aura of controlled mystique.
He was at CinemaCon this week, conspicuously. On Tuesday April 14 he appeared at the Warner Bros. presentation to share a preview of his upcoming film Digger, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
Then for Paramount’s presentation on Thursday, he made himself present without making himself present, via a video filmed on the Melrose Avenue lot’s iconic water tower and directed by Jon M. Chu.
In the video, Cruise provided voiceover as dozens of major stars helped highlight Paramount’s biggest hits across its history.
It ended with Cruise sitting on top of the water tower and saying, “The future looks pretty great from here.”
It was a statement about the studio. It was also a statement about himself, delivered from a tower, which is the Tom Cruise version of a press release.
The Hollywood Reporter had reported the filming of the secret Paramount video the previous month.
Its appearance at CinemaCon as the opening of a presentation that concluded with the Top Gun 3 announcement suggests the two moments were designed to be read together, Cruise’s commitment to Paramount’s future, and Paramount’s biggest future bet with Cruise at the center of it.
Why ‘Top Gun 3’ Makes Financial Sense
The numbers that underpin this announcement are not subtle. Top Gun: Maverick was released in 2022, during a period when many movie theaters were still operating under COVID-19 restrictions, when the theatrical exhibition industry was genuinely in crisis, and when the case for streaming over cinemas had never been louder.
Maverick earned $1.5 billion at the global box office against a $170 million budget.
It was the first film in Tom Cruise’s career to gross over $1 billion. It was widely credited with giving theatrical exhibition the jolt of confidence it needed when the industry was most vulnerable.
Cruise returned for Maverick 36 years after he first played Maverick in Tony Scott’s 1986 original.
The original Top Gun was a cultural phenomenon, fighter jets, Ray-Bans, the volleyball scene, “Danger Zone,” that defined a specific strain of American cinema in the Reagan era.
Maverick honored that legacy while building something new around it: Miles Teller as Rooster, the son of Maverick’s late best friend Goose, and a roster of new pilots played by Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Monica Barbaro, Danny Ramirez, Jay Ellis, Greg Tarzan Davis and Manny Jacinto.
Maverick became the movie that proved sequels to beloved properties, when handled with genuine craft and real commitment, could outperform the originals by almost every metric.
It is the template for what Top Gun 3 is being built toward.
What Is Known About The Film So Far?
Ehren Kruger is writing the script. Kruger co-wrote Maverick alongside Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie. His previous solo credits include the Transformers sequels, and he was brought in for Maverick specifically because of his ability to construct large-scale action narratives that retain emotional coherence.
The script being “well underway” means the story exists at a meaningful level of development, this is not an announcement of an intention to make a film, it is an announcement of a film that is actively being made.
No director has been announced. Joseph Kosinski directed Maverick and brought a visual precision to the aerial sequences that was widely praised, the film’s IMAX dogfight footage remains some of the most technically ambitious material shot for a major studio production in years.
Whether Kosinski returns is one of the most significant open questions about the project. No announcement has been made.
No additional cast has been confirmed. The obvious expectation is that Miles Teller returns as Rooster, he has been Cruise’s primary scene partner and the emotional anchor of the franchise since Maverick, but nothing has been officially stated.
Glen Powell, who played Hangman, cryptically suggested in 2024 interviews that he knew production dates and expected to be involved.
Jennifer Connelly as Penny Benjamin, Jon Hamm as Cyclone, and Monica Barbaro as Phoenix all remain unconfirmed. No return date has been set. No release date has been announced.
The Kilmer Question
One of the unavoidable realities of Top Gun 3 is that Val Kilmer will not be in it. Kilmer played Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in the 1986 original and returned for Maverick in what became his final film role.
He died in 2025. His scene in Maverick, a quiet exchange with Cruise’s Maverick, filmed with enormous care given Kilmer’s health at the time, was one of the most emotionally resonant moments in the entire film.
The franchise will need to account for Iceman’s absence in whatever story it tells next, and how it chooses to do that will be one of the first significant creative decisions the production makes.
Iceman’s arc in Maverick closed with a sense of completion, the two old rivals and reluctant friends saying what needed to be said.
That closing is now also a goodbye that the audience did not know it was watching in real time. Top Gun 3 inherits that weight.
Where Is Tom Cruise In His Career Now?
Cruise is among the last genuine movie stars of his generation who has refused to migrate toward streaming, who continues to bet on theatrical releases as the primary expression of his career, and who has been proven right repeatedly.
He holds the Guinness World Record for the most consecutive $100 million-grossing films, eleven releases between 2012 and 2025.
He wrapped Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning in 2025, bringing that franchise to a formal conclusion.
Digger, the Iñárritu film he previewed at CinemaCon, is his next project before Top Gun 3 comes into focus.
The announcement of Top Gun 3 is in some ways an announcement about what Cruise’s career looks like for the next several years.
He is done with Ethan Hunt, he is building a new project with one of cinema’s most serious directors, and he is returning to the franchise that gave him his first billion-dollar film.
The architecture of his career in his sixties is taking shape, and it is built around exactly the kind of large-scale, practically-executed, theatrically-committed cinema that he has always championed.
What’s The Next Step In The Film’s Process?
The practical next step is a director announcement, which will tell the industry and the audience a great deal about what kind of film Top Gun 3 is going to be.
A Kosinski return signals continuity and commitment to the visual language of Maverick. A different director signals an evolution, or a departure.
After that, cast. The Maverick ensemble was genuinely exceptional and built real chemistry across its ensemble.
Reassembling it, or replacing parts of it, will be a closely watched process. Glen Powell in particular has become one of the most commercially significant actors in Hollywood since Maverick launched his mainstream profile. His participation, and on what terms, will be a story of its own.
Top Gun 3 has no release date. It has a confirmed star, a confirmed producer, and a script.
For a project of this scale, that is enough to be genuinely exciting. Paramount knows it. Cruise knows it. The market for “Tom Cruise in a fighter jet” does not require much more than that to generate anticipation.
He said the future looks pretty great from up there. He was sitting on a water tower. He is also not wrong.
