‘Top Gun 3’ officially in works — and Tom Cruise is returning

A sequel to the hit action film “Top Gun: Maverick” is officially in the works, and Tom Cruise is set to once again return as Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.

Paramount, the studio behind the original 1986 “Top Gun” film and its 2022 follow-up, announced the highly anticipated news during its CinemaCon 2026 panel on Thursday, according to Variety.

The studio reportedly confirmed that a script is being written and that Jerry Bruckheimer will also return to produce the upcoming threequel.

“Maverick” marked Cruise’s first return to the role of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell since the original hit theaters 36 years earlier.

While the sequel saw Cruise’s character train a new generation of TOPGUN pilots – including Miles Teller’s Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, Glen Powell’s Jake “Hangman” Seresin and Lewis Pullman’s Robert “Bob” Floyd – it also saw the emotional return of the late Val Kilmer as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky.

Kelly McGillis, meanwhile, did not return as Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood for the long-awaited follow-up.

The 63-year-old “Mission: Impossible” star teased the future of the “Top Gun” franchise in May 2025 while discussing what he had planned next in his action-packed movie career.

“Yeah, we’re thinking and talking about many different stories and what could we do and what’s possible,” he told Australia’s “Today” show at the time.

Cruise added, “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.’”

Christopher McQuarrie, Cruise’s longtime collaborator who co-wrote and co-produced “Maverick,” suggested that another “Top Gun” sequel could be flying back to the big screen sooner than expected as well.

“I already know what it is. It wasn’t hard,” the filmmaker told the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast last May. “I thought it would be, and that’s a good place to walk from.”

“You walk into the room going, ‘Come on, what are we going to do?’ And [co-writer] Ehren Kruger pitched something, and we had one conversation about it,” he added. “The framework is there, so it’s not hard to crack.”

Besides grossing a stunning $1.49 billion at the box office, “Maverick” also scored the Oscar for Best Sound at the 2023 Academy Awards.

“Thank you to everyone who saw [“Top Gun: Maverick”] and helped make it a historic opening weekend,” Cruise wrote in a social media post to fans following the flick’s release.

But “Top Gun” wouldn’t be the only franchise that has the “Jerry Maguire” star’s fans wondering about the future.

When the eighth and latest entry in the “Mission: Impossible” series, “The Final Reckoning,” was released last year, Cruise teased that it may have marked a conclusion to the nearly 30-year spy saga.

“It’s the final!” he told reporters during the film’s New York City premiere. “It’s not called ‘final’ for nothing.”