TAKEOFF

‘Top Gun′ Producer Confirms Third Film Is ‘Already in the Bag’

Tom Cruise similarly confirmed that a third film was in the works earlier this month.

Top Gun 3 may not be such a distant reality. In a Monday episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie—who co-wrote and produced Top Gun: Maverick plus co-wrote and directed Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning—gave some big updates on the franchise’s potential third installment. “It’s already in the bag,” McQuarrie confirmed when asked if Top Gun 3 had a story locked down. “The truth of the matter is, none of these are hard to crack,” he continued. “It’s as you start to execute it, and as you start to interrogate it, as you start [to think] why these movies are made the way they are. It’s not the action… It’s the emotion.” Series star Tom Cruise also previously hinted at the threequel earlier this month, telling the Today Show Australia that he’s actively “working on” a potential Top Gun 3 and even a sequel to his 1990 NASCAR flick Days of Thunder. “We’re thinking and talking about many different stories and what could we do and what’s possible,” Cruise said at the time. “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.” McQuarrie and Cruise are frequent collaborators having notably worked together on the Mission: Impossible franchise.