Top Gun 3: Producer Teases Maverick Sequel Could Happen

There’s still time for Avatar: Way of the Water to swoop in and make waves at the 2022 box office, but for now, Top Gun: Maverick is currently the big winner of the year. The Tom Cruise-led movie has made over $1.4 billion at the box office, and it is currently the eleventh-highest-grossing film of all time. The sequel also earned an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score with a 96% critics rating and a 99% audience rating. With these types of numbers, it’s no surprise that fans are wondering if there will be a Top Gun 3. Recently, director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer spoke atDeadline‘s Contenders LA3C panel and addressed the possibility of another film.

“Is there another story that is compelling enough that we need to go back?” Kosinski asked. “It seems to me at the end of this film that Maverick has some gas left in the tank. He’s not settling down.” While it sounds like it will all come down to whether or not there is another good story to be told, Kosinski also talked about the difficulties of filming the movie and the toll it took on the actors. 

“I knew we’d be able to get Tom on the plane, but we weren’t sure about the rest of the cast,” Kosinski explained. “So, Tom devised this three-month course for all the actors, to start with a very simple airplane and work their way up to the Navy jet. They all were able to do all their scenes in the jets for real, which is just phenomenal because you can’t imagine how physically difficult it is to do what they’re doing. They’re flying with real Top Gun pilots. They’re doing the same maneuvers, even more intense maneuvers than they do in training.”

He added, “I think a couple of them had a hard time, but they wouldn’t let me know … They would actually kind of keep it under wraps just because they wanted to make sure we were getting everything we needed to get.”

Why Did Top Gun: Maverick Thrive at the Box Office?

Bruckheimer previously spoke with Entertainment Weekly about why Top Gun: Maverick crushed the box office, and even made some Marvel comparisons. 

“I think audiences have been seeing so much CGI, which is wonderful, I go see the same movies, but it’s also nice to see the real deal and to be part of a camaraderie of characters that get up in the sky and have to be as good as they can be,” Bruckheimer explained. “The audiences love the Marvel, they love the DC stuff. They’re beautifully made by really talented people. Sometimes you want to see something that’s real, and that’s what Top Gun gave us… These aviators are out there protecting our country right now, flying around the world, and you’re taking a ride with them. You’re seeing what they do, you’re seeing what their life is like, and the trials and tribulations that they have to go through. You’re actually experiencing it with our actors.”

Top Gun: Maverick is now available on 4K UHD+Digital Blu-ray.