Top Gun 3 set for cinemas with Tom Cruise returning to the skies as Maverick

15 January 2024, 15:44

After becoming Tom Cruise's highest-grossing film ever, he's making a return as Maverick in a new Top Gun movie. Picture: Getty/Alamy

By Thomas Edward

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Hollywood's hero of the skies is taking off again.

After the enormous success of the long overdue sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, in 2022, there's still a major appetite for a movie-going adrenaline rush it seems.

When Tom Cruise donned his aviator shades once again, 36 years after his original run out as renegade pilot Maverick, people were initially sceptical.

But any doubters were proved wrong, with Top Gun: Maverick being dubbed as the film which revitalised cinema after its struggles throughout the pandemic.

It was so successful in fact, it became the highest-grossing film of Tom Cruise's entire career, despite being a consistent star of Hollywood blockbusters for nearly forty years.

The belated sequel to 1986's Top Gun amassed more than $1.49 billion in global box office revenue, nearly double his next most commercially successful film in 2018's Mission: Impossible - Fallout which made $791.1 million.

Understandably then, another sequel has been green-lit and is currently in the works with Top Gun: Maverick co-writer Ehren Kruger “officially at work” on a script for the project.

Top Gun: Maverick | NEW Official Trailer (2022 Movie) - Tom Cruise

No director has been attached to the new sequel yet, though it's been mooted that Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski will once again be in the frame, potentially as a producer too.

It's expected that the third entry into the Top Gun franchise will reunite the legendary pilot Maverick with young guns which intends to reunite Cruise with fellow Maverick stars Miles Teller and Glen Powell.

Whilst these are only rumoured at present, no other cast member's names have been thrown out.

Jennifer Connelly - who played Maverick's love interest Penny Benjamin - hasn't been mentioned yet, and it's even more unlikely that Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood played by Kelly McGillis in the 1986 original will return.

Though Val Kilmer reprised his role of old rival and long-time buddy "Iceman" in Top Gun: Maverick, his ongoing health issues might rule him out.

Miles Teller starred as Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw whilst Glen Powell played Jake "Hangman" Seresin, rivals in the US Navy pilot academy that Maverick mentored.

The sequel is in such early stages of development that the plot is open for debate, though it'll likely see a changing of the guard, with fleshing out the stories of new rivals "Rooster" and "Hangman".

A third instalment to the Top Gun franchise is on its way. Picture: Alamy

With Paramount commissioning another venture in the skies, eyebrows have been raised due to Cruise recently signing a whopping contract with Warner Bros. Studios.

According to reports, Cruise's new contract is non-exclusive so he can develop and star in films for Warner whilst working on other projects.

It might be some time before we see Cruise's Maverick take our breath away once again, however.

Unusually for a blockbuster smash, Top Gun: Maverick was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, with legendary director Steven Spielberg saying to Tom Cruise: "You saved Hollywood’s ass".