New Update Sends Top Gun 3 Hype Into Overdrive as Tom Cruise Sequel Takes Flight

After Top Gun: Maverick went absolutely ballistic at the box office in 2022, it was really only a matter of time before Paramount wheeled out the next instalment. In case you slept through last year, Maverick didn’t just make big money—£1.2 billion or thereabouts—it more or less dusted the competition besides Avatar: The Way of Water. It also marked Tom Cruise’s triumphant return to his most iconic character, Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell, nearly four decades after he first put on the aviators back in 1986. Safe to say, the appetite for knuckleheaded, high-speed fighter pilot mayhem remains undiminished.

Top Gun 3: Now Official

Cut to CinemaCon 2026 in Las Vegas, where Paramount finally stopped being coy and confirmed Top Gun 3 is absolutely, definitely in development. Don’t break out the flight jacket just yet—the details beyond that are still bizarrely thin. What we do know:

• Tom Cruise is officially back as Maverick.
• Jerry Bruckheimer, the man who’s produced more explosions than the British military, returns as executive producer.
• No official word yet on a director, release date, or the rest of the cast.

As for the story, Paramount’s keeping everyone on a need-to-know basis (and apparently, most people don’t need to know).

Returning Faces? Jay Ellis Spills What He Can

This is where it gets interesting, or at least as interesting as actors being grilled on red carpets about projects they can’t legally discuss. Jay Ellis, who stole a fair bit of Maverick’s spotlight as Lt. Reuben 'Payback' Fitch, gave Entertainment Weekly about as much as the lawyers would allow during the Not Suitable for Work premiere.

First thing out of his mouth: he’ll 'happily fit the next Top Gun into [his] schedule.' The man is keen, and apparently there’s a full-blown script already in the pipeline. Everyone, from Paramount to Tom Cruise to Bruckheimer, is deeply 'excited'—the kind of word you use when you can’t actually say anything. Ellis laid it out like this:

'There is a script. Paramount's very excited about it, Tom's very excited about it, Bruckheimer's very excited about it. That whole crew...what a creative powerhouse. I think the gold standard is, "How do we push this film past what the last one was?" And I think that's why you see Tom take such a long break between making the original Top Gun and making Maverick—he wanted to make sure we were pushing the medium forward, and with this next one, we hope to do the same whenever they're ready to do it.'

Translation: everyone’s mum, nobody’s signed on the dotted line yet (besides Cruise), but the ambition is to not repeat themselves and—fingers crossed—not make this a cash-in sequel.

Who Else Could Return?

Ellis, of course, played a major supporting role in Maverick, picked as one of the hotshot pilots on Maverick’s mission to blow up an unnamed uranium plant. He’s in Hollywood juggernaut territory right now—Not Suitable for Work has just premiered, he’s lined up for The Rookie: North, plus there’s a strong chance he’ll be back for a third series of Netflix’s Running Point. So, busy man, but not too busy to jump back in the cockpit if asked.

Speculation (and let’s be honest, it’s mostly speculation at this point) is that Miles Teller might also return as Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw, along with Glen Powell’s Jake 'Hangman' Seresin—no one’s ruling them out yet, at any rate. But let’s also be real: unless Tom Cruise has a massive change of heart, they’ll all be signing up for another go before too long.

Don’t expect another 36-year wait this time. Given the cash cow they’ve just milked, Paramount will want the jets back in the air sooner rather than later.

If you want to catch up or do your homework, the first two Top Gun films are streaming on Paramount+.