It appears movie goers will soon be looking to the skies once more as Paramount Pictures has reportedly green-lit a third entry into Tom Cruise’s high-flying Top Gun franchise.
First reported as in development by The Puck‘s Matthew Belloni on January 11th, the threequel’s first draft is supposedly currently being worked on by Top Gun: Maverick co-writer Ehren Kruger, who in addition to helping pen the 2023 Academy Award winner is perhaps best known for being the sole scribe behind both Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Age of Extinction.
Per Deadline’s recap of Belloni’s pay-walled scoop, the film is currently looking to reunite the aforementioned Cruise with his Maverick co-stars Miles Teller and Glen Powell under the watchful guidance of producers Jerry Bruckheimer and David Ellison.
Maverick director Joseph Kosinski is also supposedly being looked at to either direct or serve as an additional producer on the film.
However, as of writing, it appears that none of the above creatives has thus far committed to Paramount’s next sortie.
Interestingly, this news of Paramount’s apparent moving on Top Gun 3 comes just two days after it was announced that the franchise’s star had signed a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to help the latter studio “jointly develop and produce original and franchise theatrical films starring [himself] in 2024”.
Speaking to their new partnership, Warner Bros. Picture Group’s two Co-Chairs-slash-CEOs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy exclaimed, “We are thrilled to be working with Tom, an absolute legend in the film industry. Our vision, from day one, has been to rebuild this iconic studio to the heights of its glory days, and, in fact, when we first sat down with David Zaslav to talk about joining the Warner Bros. Discovery team, he said to us, ‘We are on a mission to bring Warner Bros. back – we have the best resources, storytelling IP, and talent in the business – and we need to bring Tom Cruise back to Warner Bros!’.”
“Today, that becomes a reality and we are one step closer to achieving our ambition,” they added. “We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Tom back to Warner Bros. and look forward to bringing more of his genius to life on screen in the years ahead.”
To this end, one wonders just how far out Paramount is looking to release the film, as between his new WBD gig, his ongoing work on both Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning – Part 2 and a movie for Universal Pictures which will see him “taking a rocket up to the space station and shooting and hopefully being the first civilian to do a spacewalk outside of the space station,” it seems Cruise’s schedule for the foreseeable future, suffice to say, leaves seemingly very little room for any additional work.
But then again, this is Cruise. As history has shown, if the Edge of Tomorrow star wants to make a movie, he’ll find a way to make it happen – time, budget, or even geographical restraints be damned.