'Top Gun 3' Is Reportedly in the Works

A new "Top Gun" movie is reportedly on the horizon – and this time around, Paramount Pictures isn't making us wait 36 years for it.

Still riding high from the success of "Top Gun: Maverick," Paramount is reportedly working on a third installment of the wildly popular franchise, with leading men Tom Cruise, Miles Teller and Glen Powell and "Maverick" director Joseph Kosinski all said to be potentially returning for another sortie.

News of a new "Top Gun" movie comes from a report in Puck, a digital-media startup that's made a splash since its founding in 2021 with credible reporting on America's power centers from Washington, D.C. to Hollywood. (Representatives of Paramount declined to comment on the report.)

Cruise has spent the last few years trying to make a movie with scenes shot aboard the International Space Station. It would have been the first film shot in space, but Russian filmmakers beat him to the punch. He recently signed a deal to create movie franchises for Paramount competitor Warner Bros., but the deal left him free to continue working elsewhere. He's currently working on another Paramount franchise film, "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning Part Two," and was also the star of Paramount's Jack Reacher movie series.

"Top Gun: Maverick" was a critical and commercial success for both Cruise and Paramount Pictures, becoming the actor's highest-grossing film of all time and the studio's second-highest grossing film ever, eclipsed only by the 1997 film "Titanic." Like "Titanic," "Maverick" also earned a nomination for Best Picture but lost to "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once" at the 95th Academy Awards. The film was also nominated for Best Sound (which it won), Best Adapted Screenplay, Original Song, Editing and Visual Effects.

The U.S. military will probably be the happiest to hear news of a new "Top Gun" movie. Although the claim that the original "Top Gun" film in 1986 boosted Navy recruits by 500% has turned out to be bogus, the sea service still saw a significant boost in interest following the movie's release, with new enlistments rising 8% that year. With the U.S. military currently in the throes of a recruiting crisis in recent years, an 8% boost in new recruits is something the Navy (and other branches) could only dream of.

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