Tom Cruise and producer Jerry Bruckheimer are reuniting to make Top Gun 3, but a report suggests that director Joseph Kosinski won’t be joining them. Update: High-flying sequel Top Gun 3 was formally announced only a few days ago, but one thing that wasn’t mentioned at the time was who would direct it. Joseph Kosinski ... Top Gun 3 | Joseph Kosinski too busy to direct the sequel (report)
Tom Cruise and producer Jerry Bruckheimer are reuniting to make Top Gun 3, but a report suggests that director Joseph Kosinski won’t be joining them.
Update: High-flying sequel Top Gun 3 was formally announced only a few days ago, but one thing that wasn’t mentioned at the time was who would direct it. Joseph Kosinski led the second film, Top Gun: Maverick, to box office glory and critical acclaim, so the assumption was that he would come back for the third.
Instead, there’s a report at Puck (via World of Reel) which suggests that Kosinski is simply too busy to fit another F-15 feature into his schedule. He’s currently working on a new Miami Vice movie for Universal, and also has something about flying saucers in the works at Apple. Further off, there’s talk of a sequel to the hit F1: The Movie (a mystifying Best Picture nominee).
We’ve heard that Christopher McQuarrie is co-writing the Top Gun 3 script; it now seems quite possible that he’ll also direct, given his work with Tom Cruise on the Mission: Impossible franchise, and talent for filming high altitude stunts.
We’ll bring you more, as always, as it comes in.
Our original story follows…
17th April 2026: Just in time for the original Top Gun's 40th anniversary, Paramount has formally announced that Top Gun 3 is in development, with Tom Cruise returning as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell.
Paramount exec broke the news at CinemaCon in Las Vegas overnight, telling the crowd, “Top Gun 3 officially in development with a script well underway, reuniting Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer” (thanks, THR).
Those involved in the making of Top Gun: Maverick have been talking about making a third film ever since it became a $1.5bn smash in 2022. Bruckheimer, the veteran producer, had said in 2024 that there was a “wonderful idea” for a sequel, but the production was waiting for Tom Cruise to stop being a busy Hollywood superstar. Or just find a gap in his schedule.
There’s no word who’s writing or directing Top Gun 3 now it’s officially going ahead. Ehren Krueger and Christopher McQuarrie co-wrote Top Gun: Maverick's script, and they’ve both talked about writing the third film on occasion since.
Joseph Kosinski directed Maverick, but hasn’t formally been announced as Top Gun 3's shot caller. It seems highly likely that Paramount would make him an offer he couldn’t refuse, though, given how successful that second film was. And only last year, he was talking about what a third entry might look like.
“I think we’ve found a way to do it, not only in the scale of what we’re proposing, but the idea itself of the story we’re telling,” he told GQ in 2025. “We’re thinking much bigger than…It’s a really existential crisis that Maverick has in this, and it’s much bigger than himself. It actually… I’m trying to describe it without giving anything away. It’s an existential question that Maverick has to deal with, that would make Maverick feel small, I think, as a movie, compared to what we’re talking about.”
We’ll bring you more on Top Gun 3 as we hear it. In the meantime, there’s the original Top Gun – getting a UK cinema re-release on the 13th May 2026.
