“It will be Tom Cruise [leading the cast],” Bruckheimer said. “Tom is amazing. We spent time with him. We have a story. Joe Kosinski had a wonderful story idea for it, and [Tom] said, ‘I really like that,’ so we’re developing it. But you never know when it’s going to get made because Tom is so busy. He’s doing ‘Mission: Impossible’ right now, he’s got a picture after it. Hopefully, we’ll get a screenplay that he loves, and we’ll be back in the air again.”

Cruise is currently filming “Mission: Impossible 8,” which will serve as the sequel to last year’s “Dead Reckoning.” Paramount is also behind that action franchise. The studio is hoping that “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski will return to helm the next “Top Gun” movie. Bruckheimer now confirmed Kosinski came up with the story idea for the next sequel. “Top Gun” newcomers Glen Powell, Miles Teller and more are likely to return.

 

“People looked at me like I knew what was going on,” Powell told Variety at Sundance earlier this year about the next “Top Gun ” movie. “There is going to be some fun stuff being announced soon…but it was confidential to me. I talk to [Joseph] Kosinski, Cruise and Jerry [Bruckheimer] all the time. There is stuff happening and it sounds very exciting. I don’t know when I’ll be going back…I’m sure there is a jet waiting for me sometime in the future.”

“Top Gun: Maverick” was a huge hit for Paramount, which tried for decades to find a way to get Cruise back in aviators. The film was nominated for the Oscar for best picture and grossed nearly $1.5 billion, making it the most popular film of Cruise’s career.